Architect blames plan flaws for delay to new hospital
AN ARCHITECT behind a flagship children’s hospital that has been delayed by six months has claimed construction was rushed despite repeated warnings that designs were “seriously flawed”.
Robert Menzies said staff, patients and taxpayers will end up with a building that is “not as good as it good be” because the pressure to meet deadlines led managers in charge of the £150 million Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh to ignore potential problems.
He said columns blocking the middle of rooms, lack of daylight and difficulties of trying to use the central atrium as a dual purpose outpatients’ waiting room and exhibition space with patients’ cinema were among the flaws.
In a letter to The Herald, Mr Menzies – an experienced healthcare architect who is now retired – said clinicians’ complaints that the layout would be “totally useless” and “completely unacceptable” were ignored.
Mr Menzies, who was also involved in the design of the new Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow, was working for BMJ Architects in Glasgow when the firm was hired by NHS Lothian, jointly with Nightingale Associates, to draw up an “exemplar design” for the new Edinburgh children’s hospital.
The exemplar is a template design that is used as a guide layout by architects subsequently bidding for a construction contract.
However, Mr Menzies said the exemplar process was complicated by numerous redesigns as the health board switched from requesting only a children’s hospital to incorporating an extension of the existing adult neurological department into the site. It then dropped the neurological unit before re-incorporating it again when the project went from being publicly-funded to a PFI scheme.
Speaking to The Herald, Mr Menzies said he became increasingly concerned that flaws in the exemplar design were not being ironed out because of pressure to keep to schedule.
He said: “There was pressure to get this up and running. The problem with the exemplar design system is that
you’re rushing to meet a deadline and you don’t have time to work things out.”
However, Mr Menzies, who went on to compete unsuccessfully for the construction contract, said the NHS project managers warned bidders they would lose points for diverging from the exemplar layout.
He said he believes his team lost out because it was “quicker and easier” for the health board to stick to the original layout.
It comes after NHS Lothian confirmed the hospital will now open in spring 2018, due to “unavoidable technical construction problems”, poor weather and financial problems affecting two of the contractors.
A spokeswoman for the health board said the “technical construction problems” were unrelated to the building’s design.
Susan Goldsmith, acting chief executive of NHS Lothian, said delays were due to one subcontractor entering administration and a second going into liquidation.