Planning The planning started shortly thereafter and went through various iterations before getting a final approval at Netcare Fincom structure in October of 2017 . The building design then went through more changes until the site handover in November 2019 .
In March 2020 South Africa and the site went into lockdown for the COVID pandemic , this allowed the professional team to catch up on documentation but to also reassess some of the planning and details that would work around future pandemics . The air flow , patient separation and clean and infected zones were identified , and small modifications were made to work in a pandemic mode . The design was fairly robust and had incorporated many of the best practice ideas beforehand . significant milestone and makes it one of the most efficient uses of space by comparison for the specialised nature of the facility .
The other design factors that were to be considered were :
• To achieve clean and efficient circulation routes through the building , both vertically and horizontally . There are 10 lifts spread throughout the horizontal circulation to make the vertical transitions uncluttered and efficient .
• The functional zones and adjacencies work well with the various departments and disciplines , to the point that the first floor is a highly specialised super surgical floor , with the theatres , ICU / HC , cardiac unit , CCU and CTICU and the specialists all on one floor .
Design Development & Value Engineering In June of 2019 , the project tested the brief and the budget through a process of value engineering which again brought about significant changes to the design in the horizontal and vertical stacking arrangements of the building . The team reduced the area by approximately 4,500m 2 to the benefit of the project as well as the optimisation of the land use and building envelope . The goal was to get the design as efficient as possible . This was measured against facilities within the Netcare group of hospitals and by way of comparison here is the data :
• Netcare Polokwane hospital 89m 2 per bed
• CBMH – Cape Town 110m 2 per bed
• Netcare Alberton Hospital 104m 2 per bed
Given the scale of the project , getting the area per bed below the CBMH baseline was a
Netcare Alberton 71