Southmead Hospital – Bristol
The Requirement
The Brunel Building at the Southmead Hospital site is the largest new acute hospital building that has been built in the UK to date and is currently the third-largest in Europe.
North Bristol NHS Trust issued a tender for furniture to all relevant companies across the UK and Europe to submit ideas on how best to furnish the entire seven floors at the innovative new hospital. The initial tender from North Bristol NHS Trust requested that each company show ways in which their portfolio of furniture could be best used to adapt the style of the hospital and to offer more flexible environments for staff and patients. This required designing the entire hospital from the reception through to the consultation rooms including creating back office flexibility for those employees needing desk space.
The Solution
The Senator Group worked in partnership with the North Bristol NHS Trust to create a bespoke design plan that complemented the multi-million-pound exterior.
One challenge was to ensure that it increased the flexibility of the space in the hospital. The team needed to provide a series of plans that allowed varied environments for both patients and staff that would encourage collaboration, open environments and pockets of concentration for staff working at the hospital but matching this to include privacy and health and welfare for patients and visitors.
The Senator Group showcased a number of solutions and after a year-long tender process won the £2m contract. The plans offered the Trust design solutions, which would provide over 30,000 items of loose furniture to the site with only an eight week installation period for over 4,000 rooms. On the back of the main project The Senator Group was tasked with furnishing the rest of the buildings on the hospital site with the same quality of furniture.
The Results
After the award The Senator Group worked in partnership with the NHS Trust from the very early design stages to ensure that the right products were selected and that they reflected the culture change at the hospital.
Case Study in partnership with The Senator Group.
