10 | REGIONAL Hillmorton Hospital: Adult Acute Facility 10a Vulcan Place | Middleton | Christchurch | New Zealand www.farrellconstruction.co.nz Proudly supporting Hillmorton Hospital Phone: +64 3 374 3266 Email: contact@farrells.co.nz T T Kelly Deeks Team overcome project challenges “When we looked at the size of the building, the number of people we would need onsite and the deadline we had to achieve, building it entirely in the traditional way just wasn’t going to work.” T T to page 12 Finding a way to deliver one of Canterbury’s largest health infrastructure projects on time without overwhelming the construction site or stretching available resources was one of the biggest challenges facing the team behind Hillmorton Hospital’s new Adult Acute Facility. Less than two years later, that challenge has become one of the project’s biggest success stories, with work progressing ahead of programme and the facility on track for completion at the end of 2027. Naylor Love is delivering the new 80-bed mental health facility as part of the long-term redevelopment of the Hillmorton campus, a project that will replace ageing infrastructure with purpose-built facilities designed to better support patients and clinical staff. But before construction could begin in earnest, the team needed to rethink how a project of this scale could be delivered within an ambitious time frame. Senior project manager Grant Molloy says the answer came from looking beyond traditional construction methods. “Offsite construction was really about necessity,” Grant says. “When we looked at the size of the building, the number of people we would need onsite and the deadline we had to achieve, building it entirely in the traditional way just wasn’t going to work.” Working backwards from the required completion date allowed the project team to identify where the greatest risks lay and where efficiencies could be gained. That planning ultimately led to a partnership with Christchurch-based prefabrication specialist VIP Frames and Trusses in Bromley, a company Naylor Love already knew for its structural steel work, but which also had growing expertise in offsite manufacturing. “They really bought into what we were advocating for,” Grant says. “They also had their own transport capability, which is a critical part of the process. There is no point building a huge structure in a factory if you can’t get it safely to site.” Together the companies developed a modular system using single bay pods incorporating ceiling cassettes, roof trusses, and structural diaphragms. While the modules were manufactured offsite, construction crews continued preparing the Hillmorton site, allowing multiple stages of the project to progress simultaneously. The results have been significant. Over nine months, 144 prefabricated pods were manufactured, transported, and installed. Instead of constructing every element piece by piece onsite, the completed sections were craned directly into position, allowing follow on trades to begin work immediately.
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