2023 In Healthcare Construction -Building Beyond Tradition

For the second week running, headlines on the BBC news state ‘NHS In Crisis’ … this has become an increasingly regular occurrence as cases of winter flu and Covid increase, and nursing resource issues continue to bite.

As a UK manufacturer supplying exclusively to healthcare sector construction projects, I have read many such headlines over the past few months and spoken with numerous individuals involved from hospital capital and estates teams to leading healthcare designers, and it’s commonly felt that the ‘sticking plaster’ approach to dealing with an estimated ￡5 billion shortfall in maintenance spending is a growing problem across trusts and primary care sites.

Pandemic pressures have created and highlighted many issues, but the fact remains that under investment in healthcare estates is at the heart of the crisis, such as:

• Poor facilities for nursing staff – highlighted during the height of the pandemic – leading to issues in retaining and recruiting staff as well as basic welfare issues.
• Capital spending on healthcare as a per cent of GDP over the past 10 years is a lot lower than previous (see chart below) leading to 3 beds per 1000 persons compared to 4 in 2000.
• In many instances, existing estates are at a stage where they are not even fit for purpose, notably RAAC?hospitals where issues with faulty concrete have rendered areas unsafe.
• New build projects have been few and slow to achieve funding. As a company, we have been involved in early design stages on a number of really exciting and much needed hospital developments which haven’t as yet been passed to proceed.

On a positive note, our thoughts turn to the New Hospital Programme (NHP) which is charged with delivering 48 new hospitals by 2030. Described by the government as the biggest hospital building programme in a generation with ￡3.7 billion in funding with a further ￡850 million available to upgrade 20 existing hospitals.?Despite concerns over timelines and increasing construction costs, the UK Secretary of State for Health, Steve Barclay, has insisted that plans will still go ahead.

With this quantity of builds and upgrades taking place, work must be conducted in a more divergent manner. This new way of working was addressed at the recent New Hospital Programme (NHP) Industry Day where UK suppliers and contractors learned more about this hugely ambitious programme and where words such as collaboration, speedy delivery, sustainability, modern methods of construction (smart construction) and once in a lifetime sustainability were often repeated and all served to create a good feeling for the coming year.

Collaboration throughout construction requires a great deal of trust, and the willingness to engage, learn lessons, and the clear commitment to making savings linked with swift delivery through standardisation of design is something to welcome, and it is a fantastic opportunity for manufacturers to cooperate and innovate in ways that we never have before.

Hence, we set out into 2023 with a positive mindset confident that the need in the sector is real and that projects where funding has already been allocated will go ahead, and for UK manufacturers such as Specialist Door Solutions (SDS) we will adapt, and collaborate to ensure that we can play our part.