The $322 million project, which incorporates a new seven storey Blacktown Clinical Services Building, presented a range of challenges for Health Infrastructure and its contractors. These include the large scale of the program, site constraints, and having to undertake construction in a live environment while adhering to infection and safety requirements.

To minimise the impact on hospital staff and patients, builders Laing O’Rourke decided to specify bathroom en suites that were prefabricated in a construction-geared factory environment and shipped whole to site for easy installation.

“The construction sites are very variable programmes, things change all the time, so having the ability to store things offsite with the help of Interpod, and the ability to bring things in when we are ready for them has helped to alleviate that,” explains Laing O’Rourke’s Senior Services Manager, Jonathan Deadman.

“The other problem we have with bathrooms is that they require a lot of different trades in a very small area, so you have everyone from plumbers, electricians, vinyl, tilers – everyone’s in there trying to work in a very small space, and trying to coordinate that on a very fast track project where you’ve only got limited time,” he says.

“Having bathroom pods takes all that away. All in all they’ve certainly saved a lot of time.”

Although Laing O’Rourke has consistently been committed to modular construction and Design for Manufacture (DFMA), the Blacktown Mt Druitt hospital expansion is the first project by Health Infrastructure to have made use of prefab pods on such a large scale – 85 per cent of all bathrooms are prefabricated.

“Building in a factory environment, and being able to coordinate all those activities offsite, means there’s actually less activities and less high risk works that are undertaken onsite,” notes Andrew Paris, project director for Health Infrastructure.

“There are a lot of benefits in terms of quality control in a factory environment – it minimises the number of those finishing trades onsite.”

166 fully DDA accessible bathroom pods were manufactured and delivered onsite, each with nurse call buttons, suspended ceilings, disabled rails and shower seats.

Manufacturing (and storing) the pods offsite greatly reduced trades and time needed onsite, shortening the overall delivery of the project.

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