DoH Health Estates led, on behalf of the Belfast Health & Social Care Trust, the delivery of a Health and Wellbeing Centre on the Shankill Road in Belfast.
Project Background
This project was for the new build construction of Shankill Health and Wellbeing Centre - providing a 'one stop shop' for services, including:
- community teams - heart failure, diabetes and respiratory
- family & child care, and fostering
- floating support for learning disabilities
- social work
- community medicine and health visitors
- public health nursing for the homeless
- intermediate care and an integrated care team
- speech and language therapy and a stroke team
- dentistry, orthodontics, nursing and ophthalmology
The new build project, led by Health Estates, cost £9 million and provided floor space of 5,393m2.
The construction of this purpose-built facility brought together services that were previously operating across 13 different facilities, which were no longer fit for purpose.
Design Features
The construction of the centre has enabled the highest quality patient care. As well as providing a wide range of services such as physiotherapy, district nursing, family and child care services, the Shankill Centre also has space which community and voluntary groups can use.
The accommodation is along an internal street with an atrium at the heart of the buildings and is organised within two linear blocks parallel to the main arterial route of the Shankill Road.
The blocks are connected by a glazed internal street which creates two internal courtyards hidden from the street.
The project included a relatively low energy ventilation approach, developed via thermal modelling. Most of the clinical and office rooms are naturally ventilated - with mechanical ventilation restricted to utility rooms, specialist treatment rooms and IT hub rooms.
A lead biomass boiler for space heating, along with low energy lighting, have contributed to a high Energy Performance Certificate A rating.