Phase 1 of new mental health facilities has been completed in Barrow-in-Furness, creating single en-suite bedrooms for 20 Patients. The development  includes a variety of lounge, dining, gym and OT spaces, access to safe and secure courtyard gardens for Patients, and vastly improved facilities for both visitors and staff . Phase 2 will be complete in early summer 2012 and will provide 15 beds for people with dementia.

The Cumbria Partnership also made a little film…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBsPBKqhWJ0&feature=youtu.be

Adrian Evans MCIAT receives the 2011 Open Award for Technical Excellence in Architectural Technology. Pictured L-R: Kevin McParland of McParland Finn; Adrian Evans of P+HS Architects; Colin Orr, President of CIAT

We are delighted to be able to announce that Adrian Evans, one of our senior Technologists and Associate of P+HS Architects has been awarded the CIAT 2011 Open Award for Technical Excellence in Architectural Technology for his work at Blaydon Leisure and Primary Care Centre for Gateshead PCT.

This prestigious annual award from the Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists recognises technical achievement and has been running since 1994. It attracts international interest with previous winners including Benoy, Ferrari World, Abu Dhabi, and Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners, The Eden Project, Cornwall.

Commenting on his award, Adrian said:

‘I am delighted and immensely proud to receive the CIAT Open Award for Technical Excellence in Architectural Technology. The award recognizes the hard work, dedication and commitment of both the design and construction teams, who were instrumental in the successful delivery of this prestigious project, which has been extremely well received by the clients, building users and visitors.’

We climbed through the mist and rain for several hours, over Cold Moor and to the top of Cringle End not far from the half way destination. Here we saw the horrifying figure appearing through the mist; dirty muddy and drenched to the skin.. luckily it was only Ray. After regrouping we started the final descent to the half way point with the anticipation of hot bacon and sausage sandwiches awaiting us.

Refuelled, strengthened with reinforcements and with the weak November sun fighting the mist and rain, we set off on the return journey, mostly FLAT! I believe Geraldine was told!? We pushed on through boggy mud and puddles, relieved that the skies were now clearing and the rain had stopped.

Regrouped at the top of a steep slippery slope we set off on the final leg through Broughton Plantation where large uprooted trees ripped from the ground lined the winding path. We finally all reached the car park and civilization; wet and muddy but with Patrice and the Great North Air Ambulance Service at the forefront of our minds..

Thanks again Cath Oldcorn and Chris Burke for organising the walk and I hope we can continue to raise more money for GNAAS. All late sponsorship will be accepted.

Later in the month I will be auctioning off a framed photograph from the walk.

Waiting area at Houghton Primary Care Centre

Yesterday I had the honour of being part of the team to receive the award from the BRE for the, now confirmed, Outstanding award under BREEAM Healthcare for Houghton Primary Care Centre. The Award was made to Steve Naylor from Sunderland PCT at the IHEEM conference in Manchester.
Being the first healthcare building in England to be awarded such an exemplary award it was with extreme pride that I was invited to speak briefly about the meaning of the award for P+HS. Pride, but also guilt, as I’m very aware that all of the hard work was done over two and a half years by Adrian Evans, Eamon Shutt and the entire technical team. Congratulations to you all, this is a great achievement for both you and the practice.

Developed for Sunderland Teaching Primary Care Trust as part of their
strategy to improve facilities to support healthy communities, Houghton is an exemplar in sustainable design and provides high quality and accessible health, social care, sports and leisure facilities from one integrated site.

P+HS has worked closely with the PCT for over eight years and is responsible for the architectural design of several innovative and sustainable primary health care facilities across the North East. The client’s commitment and the very early introduction of a BREEAM Assessor added clear focus to the Houghton project in terms of sustainability targets and the development was also able to benefit from a highly experienced project team and lessons learned on earlier schemes.

Sustainable elements include thermal wall facilitating innovative low energy natural ventilation strategy, ground source heat pumps, water attenuation, wind turbine, underfloor heating, rain water reclamation, green roof, solar thermal panels and photovoltaic panels.

The team responsible for the successful delivery of Houghton le Spring Primary Care Centre are:

Client: Sunderland Teaching Primary Care Trust
Architect: P+HS Architects
Contractor: Willmott Dixon
Natural Ventilation Engineers: Breathing Buildings
Structural Engineer: Cundall
M&E Engineers: Mott MacDonald
BREEAM Assessor: WD Re-Thinking

Selected as a case study by BRE, you can read more about this project here

The GNAAS operates across a huge 8000 square miles from the Scottish Borders down to North Yorkshire and from the east coast across to the west coast. Their helicopters can be anywhere in the region within 15 minutes with trauma doctors and paramedics on board.

Last week our colleague was thankfully airlifted to hospital by one of the GNAAS helicopters. This event has brought the sterling work of the GNAAS to our focus and we thought therefore we could show our appreciation of their work by adopting the Air Ambulance as our charity for this year.

Did you Know?

• GNAAS is not recognised as one of the emergency services
• The service does not receive any Government or National Lottery funding and therefore relies on the support of the public to continue its work.
• It costs £2500 per mission, regardless of whether the patient needs airlifting

Over the next twelve months we will be running a series of fundraising events to raise funds for the Air Ambulance service in our region, supporting the crucial work that they do, saving lives every single day.

As it costs £2500 every time the helicopter is sent we thought that we should try and make that our fundraising target. Yesterday Kay opened our P+HS bake off challenge with a kitchen full of cupcakes with added bling, flapjacks and rocky road. She well and truly threw down the gauntlet for the remaining 13 bakers who have kindly volunteered to roll up their sleeves and get their pinafores at the ready! Thanks Kay! As well as the baking we’ll be adding more events into the (baking) mix to help raise the money; for one thing £2500 is an awful lot of cake.

So watch this space for more up and coming events and send all your fundraising ideas to either myself, Diana or Cath Oldcorn.

Delicious cakes launch the bake-off challenge

So, with the promise of a few minutes fame and the impending arrival of a real live film crew, our technical staff booked their hair appointments and applied for their Equity cards. The cameras rolled and the results can now be seen here:

P+HS make appearances in both the ‘The Professional and Occupational Performance (POP) Record’ and ‘Why join the Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists (CIAT)?’ Be patient our guys don’t all make an appearance in the first frame, but they’re worth waiting for..

Ireland Wood Surgery has been shortlisted for this year’s RIBA Northern Network Awards. The scheme will be up against 37 other shortlisted entries, with the awards due to be presented on Friday 4th November. Fingers are firmly crossed.

Ireland Wood Surgery is a contemporary, new medical centre in Cookridge, Leeds. The scheme includes a GP practice, pharmacy and optician, providing a new focal point for health services in the area. The design uses steel frame construction to provide a spacious, double height waiting area and reception, linking into a fully flexible clinical area. All public space is provided at ground floor, where a bright colour scheme ensures clear navigation around the double corridor arrangement. This sustainable development includes built-in expansion to the first floor, and has been awarded the first BREEAM Excellent for primary care in Leeds.

We even managed to fit in a little bit of architectural sightseeing along the way, so I’ve attached some photos for your enjoyment. Altogether we’ve raised over £350 for Cancer Research so far (you can keep track here. So thanks to everyone for your help and support! It was a lot harder than we thought, as I don’t think any of us factored in the extra weight of spares and my ridiculously heavy duty U-lock!

For those who don’t know how to load lisps, type in Appload in AutoCAD and hit enter, navigate to the above location, click on the lisp and hit Load.

Once loaded, within the command line, type in prefix and hit enter. You will then be asked for the prefix so for room numbers enter RM- (or something similar) and hit enter, starting number will be 1, increments will also be 1, text height will depend on your drawing setup and thats it, click away! The text size/style can be edited later so don’t worry about it too much at this stage.

This little gem can be adapted for window numbers (prefix with a W-GF-) or door number (D-GF-) or anywhere else you may be required to number something which will save you tons of time!

Hopefully this should help you all but if you have any problems with it or if there are any other little things like this that you think might make life easier, let me know and i’ll see what I can do!

Client: UK Steel Enterprise Limited
Project: Hartlepool Innovation Centre – Hub Two
Main Contractor: Mansell
Procurement Method: Design & Build
Build Cost: £3m
Completion Date: July 2011

External Images

Internal Images

You need a registered account to read the full article (available here) but in essence he’s talking about a 5 year programme to roll out compulsory use of BIM software for all public projects, starting next summer. Keep those Revit skills honed and ready…

Type TREEDEPTH and set the variable to -1 This will make AutoCAD ignore all z co-ordinates so you should be able to keep that 3D topo without any problems.

Or

Enter OSNAPZ and enter 1 When snapping to objects with z co-ordinates the z axis will be ignored and substituted for the UCS elevation.

This refurbishment has been running alongside the development of the new Radiotherapy unit which is due for completion in July.