Caunton Engineering have been employed at Kettering General Hospital to help build the new Cardiac Catheterisation Unit. They are working for Medicinq Ltd., the Procure 21 NHS- framework contractor – in actuality a team of four major contractors. Simons Construction is the lead contractor for Medicinq here.

The project involved building over the “air rights “of an existing single storey hospital building. Caunton erected a sequence of two storey portal frames over this building. These required massive 914x419 Universal Beam sections for the 20-meter-spanning floor beams.

The site was extremely difficult to access. A 250te mobile crane was necessary to erect both steelwork and pre-cast concrete floor planks, from outside the footprint of the building. The crane employed a telescopic boom allowing speedy retraction when a most adjacent helicopter pad was in use –for emergencies of course. .

Fire engineering benefited the design of the frame – the floor beams were sprayed with intumescent paint off site, while the columns were in fact boarded.

Resistance to vibration is so important in such sensitive areas. The area where the sensitive cardiac catheterisation equipment is housed required substantial floor stiffening thereby minimising induced vibration. The floor beams and floor slab were enhanced substantially thereby reducing any potential risks from vibration.

Architect for this project is Gotch, Saunders and Surridge and the engineer David Smith Associates.