Project Overview
Great Western Hospital in Swindon has been open since 2002 and provides a range of services to people living in Wiltshire and surrounding areas. With an emergency and urgent care department that receives over 90,000 patients a year and 18,000 operations carried out annually across its operating theatres, ensuring the patient and staff safety standards are continually improved is significant for the Trust.
In 2019, the legacy fire system fitted throughout the hospital required replacing and updating, and after a thorough tender process, Compass Complete Solutions were selected to deliver the replacement and removal project for the Trust.
Working with Compass Complete Solutions, one of the UK’s leading providers of Fire Alarm Systems, Electrical Services, Nurse Call Systems, CCTV and Access Control, IPSL successfully removed and replaced the current fire alarms and dampener systems throughout the hospital.
Key Challenges
The main challenge of this project was that the site was a live hospital, and no down time was to be actioned during the installation and removal, so the planning and execution of the project required careful consideration to the operation of the hospital and the patients that need its services.
All parts of the hospital required new fire dampeners to be installed, including the 12 emergency and scheduled theatres, which required significant schedule planning to work around surgeries.
Due to the quantity of equipment required to be removed and replaced, the work had to be carried out in phases through floors within the hospital to ensure minimum disruption. IPSL played a key role in managing communications between various stakeholders.
Solutions Delivered
IPSL and Compass successfully delivered the removal and replacement of the fire system throughout the hospital site with no impact to services or patients. The hospital received the modernised fire alarm and dampener system it required to maintain the safety of the patients and staff.
The hospital were also the first to receive the new digital monitoring solution delivered by Compass, which includes 24/7 monitoring of fire alarm and dampener systems, accessible via a desktop portal and mobile app. This solution provides live notifications of fire devices being activated throughout the hospital site to all stakeholders who have access to the system in cases of emergency situations. The toll also provides extra compliance capabilities with real time alerts and fault notifications to enable the end client to follow up with on-site FM providers to ensure fixes are carried out within specified SLAs.
