Wexford General Hospital is a hospital in Wexford, the county town of County Wexford. It is part of the Dublin East group of hospitals. In 2014, the hospital went under a full scale services overhaul and department extension. The project was split over three parts including maternity theatre, new emergency department and a full refit of the central boiler house.
Due to the hospital been fully functional through the duration of works it posed a challenge in itself in keeping systems live. However, T Bourke also decided that this highly serviced building was an ideal model to challenge their new BIM software and trained personnel skills. T Bourke opted to use the project as a template for future works, firstly by converting all 2D architectural plans to a 3D BIM workable model. After a series of quality audits the services were built up. The intensity of the services which included;
- Compressed Air
- Vacuum
- Medical gases
- LPHW
- CHW
- Air con
- Ventilation
This density of services allowed T Bourkes in house BIM manager, Dan O’Sullivan challenge the coordination of the software and identify clash points. The BIM model was hosted on a remote server allowing local and remote access to users with cloud backup daily. The exercise was not only beneficial within the building but also back at the rooftop plant room where plant items which including two gas fired boilers, tanks, header and booster sets. The plantroom model highlighted access requirements when positioning and also allowed highlighted restriction in getting new plant or replacing the existing.
Overall, the result was a working BIM model for client handover along with commissioning reports and O&M manuals. Dan O’Sullivan commented “Although we were not required to offer BIM on the project, it was an ideal template to work with which resulted a fully coordinated workable model for the client add to as the hospital develops and extends.
- Main Contractor: JJ Rhatigan
- Architects: Devereux Architects
- Services Consultant: Douglas Carroll Engineering
- Mechanical Contractor: T BOURKE
- Electrical Contractor: Kentz