Hospital budgets $15m for cabling job

Up to $15 million of high-voltage cabling will be replaced at Wellington Regional Hospital, home to the worst electrical infrastructure in the country.

The cabling, some of which is 40 years old, runs in a ring-type formation from the hospital’s power building off Mein St before entering the hospital through the older ward and clinical blocks at the southern end.

A business case for its replacement will be presented to the Capital & Coast District Health Board for approval by February next year, corporate services general manager Rosalie Percival said.

But the work, estimated to cost between $10m and $15m and take six months, won’t disrupt hospital services.

‘‘The buildings served by the 40-yearold cables are also fed by newer cables, meaning there is resilience in our system to enable the replacement work to be carried out with little to no interruption to the operation of the hospital.’’

The DHB reported issues with Wellington Hospital’s electrical infrastructure in 2017. An independent report released to Stuff found a high potential for a complete outage to the hospital in a major emergency.

The hospital runs from power off the electrical grid, and back-up generators are meant to kick in automatically in the event of a power outage.

But last year, documents supplied under the Official Information Act showed the DHB was warned one of the four generators had been out of action for years and the remaining three were shaky at best during testing.

In June, the hospital’s back-up energy system had only 40 minutes left on the clock after generators failed to start following a network outage.

It came a day before amajor stocktake of the country’s hospitals found it had the worst electrical infrastructure – the only hospital to get a ‘‘poor’’ rating.

The report found most of its highvoltage cables needed replacing, as well as the main switchboard. Site generators are in poor condition.

The hospital also has problems with its pipes. It is suing contractors after 300 leaks sprung in a debacle reported to have cost $19m. Every part of the hospital is due to shut down over the next six years as more than 28.7 kilometres of the faulty copper pipes are replaced.

A hearing for the case is supposed to start on October 12 and last for 10 weeks at the High Court in Wellington.

The defendants are Beca Carter Holdings and Ferner Ltd, Fletcher Construction Company Ltd, R P Belbin, Crane Enfield Metals Pty Ltd trading as Crane Copper Tube, and Mico New Zealand Ltd.