Case Study: Worcester Hospital Resus Lighting

Some projects demand speed, efficiency and quality. Projects for the NHS usually fall into this category, as downtime for staff can easily cause a knock-on effect for patients. That’s certainly the case for Worcester Hospital.

Having hired A.P Carpentry to help with work on their A&E department’s resus room, the hospital was faced with a problem. How do you upgrade the lighting system in an area where the electricity can’t be turned off? The answer is by speaking to Goodridge Electrical Contractors Ltd.

The Project

Worcester Hospital’s resus room is part of the hospital’s busy accident and emergency department. While the installation of new picture lighting is normally a straightforward process, we did face a number of challenges. Firstly, power could not be turned off at any point. Secondly, the room itself needed to have bays available at all times in case of a critical patient.

With four bays to work on, we discussed the solutions with the hospital’s facilities company – Engie – along with our partners at A.P. Carpentry and the hospital’s own staff. We spent longer than usual on planning, with multiple site visits to ensure everything would run smoothly.

The day before the installation, we carried out our preliminary work, installing a new circuit into the distribution board to allow us to work safely without disrupting power to the A&E department. We had identified the early morning as the hospital’s quietest time, and at 3:30am began to install the new lighting.

The Outcome

By 11:30am, we had finished the installation. Our team worked quickly, safely and effectively, and we took care to work alongside the hospital’s housekeeping team. Goodridge Electrical Contractors Ltd would finish one bay and clean, before the housekeeping team would carry out a full disinfection. After this, patients could be moved into the resus bay straight away and we could begin on the next bay.

At all points, we had to be ready to leave the bay in a usable condition with just 15 minutes notice, in case of an emergency, but even working under these stressful conditions, we managed to complete the full installation in a single morning.

Worcester Hospital was left with four brightly-lit, clean and usable resus bays for their A&E department, while our team left with a new appreciation for the hard work that NHS staff do under incredibly stressful situations.