Ahead of schedule: Construction work on The Royal Oldham’s new £44m Women and Children’s Unit

Ahead of schedule: Construction work on The Royal Oldham’s new £44m Women and Children’s Unit

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Construction work on the new £44 million Women and Children’s Development at The Royal Oldham Hospital is ahead of schedule.

The new unit will provide services for women, babies, children and young people from Oldham, Rochdale and surrounding districts.

The building structure and external cladding are now in place. The internal fit out, which includes partitioning and engineering services infrastructure, are now being installed and are 90% complete. The internal doors, frames, floor coverings, suspended ceilings and light fittings are currently being installed to the upper and lower ground floor levels.

Ongoing construction activity will be the continual installation of the internal finishes and electrical and mechanical services.

Refurbishment of the main hospital corridor at ground, first and second floor levels has now started adjacent to the new building. This work will include new suspended ceilings, flooring, internal doors and frames, decoration and lighting. External landscaping around the new building and improvements to the road layout and road surface at the front of the hospital will begin shortly as will the construction of a new glazed link corridor and ambulance drop off point.

Graham Lord, Head of Estate Development at The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “Significant progress has been made over the past few months. The installation of the external cladding to the building has now given people a sense of how large this new facility will be. We continue to be slightly ahead of schedule and are pleased with the progress made so far.”

The development is due to open in two phases. The first phase in November 2012 will see the lower and upper ground floor levels occupied. The second phase which is the remainder of the building will be occupied in December 2012.

The development will represent the largest capital investment made to date by the Trust and is an integral part of the Making it Better programme to improve children’s, maternity and neonatal services across Greater Manchester.

Once complete, The Royal Oldham Hospital will be one of three regional centres providing the highest level of intensive care to the smallest and most vulnerable babies. The hospital will provide the modern facilities, staff and skills required to care for the most complex cases. Parents of small and vulnerable babies to the north of the city will no longer have to travel as far to access the highest level of care.

It is expected that the new children’s and maternity service will treat approximately 8,000 children a year from the Oldham, Rochdale and adjacent districts, in a new state-of-the-art children’s unit.

The Trust’s ‘In Your Hands Appeal’ aims to raise £200,000 to help buy new equipment for the new facility. For more details go to www.pat.nhs.uk/inyourhands