Last brick laid at Thurrock’s new Community Diagnostic Centre
A ceremony on April 25th marked a key milestone at a new diagnostics centre in Thurrock, Essex, with Jen Craft MP and James McMurdock MP laying the final bricks in the project’s construction.
Thurrock Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC), which is due to open in the summer, will provide a wide range of essential diagnostic services to the local community. This will speed up access to vital healthcare capabilities while reducing waiting times and leading to faster diagnosis for patients.
The new state-of-the-art centre is currently being built by Morgan Sindall Construction’s Essex business and will be run by Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust in collaboration with key healthcare providers across the integrated care board / region. The tier one contractor was appointed to the project by Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust via the NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) framework.
The construction activity has included the refurbishment of a 1,100 m2 building into new consulting rooms and staff support spaces. An existing single-storey building has also been demolished and replaced with a new infill building to house X-ray rooms, CT, and MRI scanners.
When complete, the CDC will offer CT, MRI, and ultrasound scans, echocardiography, blood tests, X-rays, and lung checks. An extra 75,000 appointments will be offered at the centre each year, with patients able to schedule checks seven days per week.
Morgan Sindall has liaised closely with Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust throughout the development and employed its Intelligent Solutions approach to ensure the project meets the needs of the hospital throughout its design, construction, and operation.
This approach included designing specialist areas and arranging work and deliveries to minimise disruption in what is quite a tight building area. Careful scheduling and organisation was especially critical when carrying out road widening and car park works, due to the effect this could have on the nearby residential areas. The result of this activity saw a significant improvement in the flow of traffic.
Other key challenges the team managed included constructing a faraday cage around the MRI room and lead lining around the X-ray and CT rooms, which are required due to the radiation emitted by the onsite equipment. The nature of this work means sub-contractors and tradespeople must be sequenced in a different order to normal to account for the additional lead and aluminium building components.
Morgan Sindall collaborated with Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust to ensure the new facility is designed, built and operated as sustainably as possible. This saw Morgan Sindall undertake its 10 Tonne Carbon Challenge multiple times, leading to an overall saving of 858 tonnes of CO2 emissions. Achieving this included omitting medical gas pipework as part of the MEP strategy, redesigning the building’s upstands from concrete to timber, and improving the buildability of the roof-level cover.
The single change that most reduced the facility’s carbon emissions was modifying the specification of the three Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHPs). This resulted in a carbon saving of 510 tonnes, which is the equivalent of heating 189 UK homes for a year.
The carbon savings were calculated utilising CarboniCa, Morgan Sindall’s digital carbon calculation tool. CarboniCa allowed the project team to estimate, manage, and reduce carbon emissions throughout the building’s design, construction, and life cycle.
Speaking at the event, Jen Craft, MP for Thurrock, said:
Early diagnosis and fast treatment are crucial for improving health outcomes, so I'm delighted that this new Community Diagnostic Centre will soon be giving residents easier access to essential tests and scans.
This facility represents much-needed investment to expand our local health services and cut waiting lists that have seen people in Thurrock waiting too long for vital checks.
Improving community healthcare in Thurrock is one of my priorities and this centre will play an important role, giving more patients access closer to home and saving them a hospital trip."
James McMurdock, MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock, added:
This centre is a major step forward for our local healthcare provision. The 75,000 new appointments will lead to quicker diagnoses and better overall experiences for patients in our area. I’m proud to see our community getting the healthcare investment that it needs.”
Ryan Liversage, Area Director for Morgan Sindall Construction in Essex, said:
The final bricklaying ceremony is an exciting moment in the development of Thurrock’s new Community Diagnostic Centre, as it shows how close we are to opening up this fantastic facility. Once complete, the centre will deliver a wide range of vital health and well-being benefits for the local area, with cutting-edge healthcare capabilities and the ability to offer over 75,000 appointments each year.
At Morgan Sindall, we’ve been hard at work on a number of CDC projects and have been able to draw on this experience to develop a tailored, high performance healthcare facility. What’s more, our sustainable, carbon cutting approach to construction aligns with Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust’s environmental commitment, which has made for a collaborative and innovative approach that’s drastically reduced the building’s carbon emissions.”
James Currell, Acting Divisional Director, Clinical and Support Services Division at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, said:
This brings us another step closer to being able to offer diagnostic tests closer to Thurrock’s community, preventing the need for travel to hospital and speeding up access.
This will be the first of four centres to open across mid and south Essex, providing us with some of the best provision in the region.”
The brick laying ceremony was attended by local elected representatives, stakeholders and representatives from Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust as well as Morgan Sindall’s project team.
This included Health and Wellbeing Board Chair Cllr Mark Hooper, Mayor of Thurrock Cllr Kairen Raper, Morgan Sindall Construction’s Essex Area Director Ryan Liversage, and Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust’s Acting Divisional Director James Currell.
The CDCs are part of a national programme funded by the Government to increase diagnostic capacity, providing one-stop shops for checks, tests and scans in the heart of local communities. They form part of the wider estates and infrastructure plans within NHS Mid and South Essex, bringing care into communities and out of acute hospitals.
Thurrock’s centre will be the first of four in mid and south Essex, with CDCs set to open in Southend, Braintree and Pitsea.
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