Synergy Health awards contract to Welconstruct
Welconstruct is set to deliver a multi-million pound, state of the art sterile service centre that will serve seven hospitals in Lancashire.
The contract, worth about £3m, has been awarded to the sterile service fit-out specialist by Synergy Health plc, the UK’s largest provider of decontamination and sterilisation services for hospitals and Primary Care Trusts.
The facility will be located at Knowsley in Merseyside following the transformation of an existing 14,500 sq ft warehouse shell.
Synergy has also signed Welconstruct up to a second multi-thousand pound sterile services contract that will see increased production capacity at a former Vernon Carus site at Matrix Park in Leyland near Chorley. Synergy recently acquired the UK-based healthcare company as part of its strategy of increasing the range of services within its patient care division.
Work on site at both schemes began in July with Knowsley scheduled to begin operating in late Spring 2009 and at Matrix Park, Leyland in January 2009.
Operated by Synergy, the two centres will provide combined decontamination and sterilisation services for the Central Lancashire North Sefton National Health Trust (CLN), which serves the Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Trust, Blackpool, Fylde & Wyre Trust, Southport & Formby Trust, St Helen’s & Knowsley Trust hospitals in the region.
Kevin Hill, sales manager for the health and sterile services division at Welconstruct, said: “The new units will be responsible for cleaning and sterilising all the re-usable instruments and equipment used in the operating departments, wards, clinics and departments of the trust’s main hospital sites.
“Every item will be washed, checked, packed and sterilised. A labelling system will provide the date of sterilisation and autoclave and cycle numbers. All of the sterilised items will then be distributed back to the correct location ready for use. In total, the CLNS facility will deal with millions of instruments each year.”
As a specialist contractor in on-site and super centre facilities, Welconstruct will provide utilities such as purified water, gas and medical air at CLNS as well as various M&E services.
Synergy projects director David Staley, said: “With such a strong track record on similar projects, we were confident in appointing Welconstruct and look forward to the smooth and efficient delivery of both schemes on time and within budget.”
Welconstruct has been delivering sterile service facilities to both the public and private sector for more than a decade.
Recent projects include a £3.7m combined decontamination and sterilisation facility at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, Berkshire that is due to complete late autumn 2008.
The centre will be managed by the Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (HWPH), which provides hospital services and more than 550 beds to a 400,000 population across East Berkshire and South Buckinghamshire.
Employing a total of 30 staff, the new unit is set to incorporate additional space made redundant by previous theatre upgrades and will also serve Heatherwood Hospital in Ascot.
Other projects include a purpose design and build facility for Synergy Health plc at the company’s first healthcare decontamination supercentre, to the value of around £4m, in Manchester, schemes for the Wolverhampton NHS Trust and the Homerton NHS Trust in London and a £1.5m sterile services unit at the NHS Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford.