Interserve, the international support services and construction group, has delivered the UK’s first NHS high-energy Proton Beam Therapy (PBT) Centre in the North West in collaboration with their supply chain partners Mace, Arup & HKS on time and under budget.
The state of the art technology uses an advanced form of radiotherapy for the treatment of complex and hard-to-treat cancers in children and adults.
The Christie, who worked in partnership with Interserve, was selected by the Department of Health as one of two providers of the service, together with University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Although procured at the same time, The Christie chose to deliver the construction phase through the Procure 21 framework. This speed to site procurement route means that from 2018, patients will benefit from local access to this advanced treatment at The Christie.
The state of the art 15,000 m2 five storey building will provide: 4 treatment rooms; a patient reception; consultation rooms and public space. The building is designed to be future proof with additional space for the Trust to grow into.
The building will begin treating patients in the autumn and, once fully operational, will treat around 750 people a year. This life-changing facility will not only save lives, but also prevent families from enduring expensive and stressful travel abroad for treatment.
PBT uses a high-energy beam of protons rather than high-energy X-rays to deliver a dose of radiotherapy. It directs the radiation treatment to precisely where it is needed with minimal damage to surrounding tissue.
As this unique project was the first being built in the UK, Interserve had no blueprint to follow so they travelled extensively around the globe to bring the benefit of international expertise and learning to the UK, overcoming many challenges to deliver this world class facility and become experts in delivering this type of facility.
The building’s list of technical features is almost as extraordinary as proton beam treatment itself: To contain the radiation, the concrete walls are up to six metres thick. The building incorporates 20,000m³ of concrete & 1,700 tonnes of reinforcement, including steel bars up to 100mm diameter. Through this, 10km of services pipework has been carefully threaded. The concrete itself weighs 48,000 tonnes, the equivalent of two aircraft carriers.
To meet the building’s demanding energy needs, a new sub-station has been built, which provides an equivalent amount of power to that needed to run the nearby Trafford Industrial Park.
The building is the first PBT Centre to target BREEAM excellent. Reclaiming heat from the Proton Beam equipment will make a significant contribution to the BREEAM scoring.
Jason Dawson, Director of Capital, Estates and Facilities of The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We are delighted to be able to offer this life changing treatment to patients. The delivery of this facility has been one of the most complex and precise projects within the NHS.
“We identified very early in the project that we needed a construction partner that could work alongside our team. The partnership approach integrated with Interserve’s technical expertise and energy to solve problems is one of the key reasons we completed on time.
George Franks, Managing Director of Interserve Construction said: “We are proud to have delivered this life-changing facility which built on our long-term relationship with The Christie with whom we have been construction partners for more than 10 years. The Interserve team’s knowledge, experience, innovation and expertise as well as the extensive field research undertaken at the start of the project has contributed to delivery on time and on budget. The completion of this project is another substantial milestone in our long-term relationship with The Christie and one that we hope continues long in to the future with many more successes along the way.”
