The building services of the HUS Bridge Hospital enable flexible activities

The new Bridge Hospital, located in the Meilahti hospital area of the hospital district of Helsinki and Uusimaa (HUS), Finland, will replace the Töölö hospital and part of the Department of Oncology. It forms a coherent whole with the Meilahti Tower Hospital, the Triangle Hospital and the Department of Oncology.

Launched in 2017, the approximately EUR 300 million project was implemented as a collaborative project management contract, enabling simultaneous planning and construction – and a tight schedule. The consulting group Granlund-Ramboll was responsible for the design of the building services (HPAC, electricity and automation) , fixed medical equipment and energy consulting for the Bridge Hospital.

In 2020, the Bridge Hospital received recognition at the international Tekla Global BIM Awards as the best public sector project.

Strict requirements for MEP design

The hospital building has stricter requirements for indoor air. The indoor air filtration class is higher than the norm and air volumes per square metre are higher. Some of the activities also require highly advanced control of temperature and humidity as well as pressure ratios. In HVAC design, the greatest demands were targeted at operating rooms, cleanrooms and isolation rooms – for example, operating rooms have room-specific air handler units and room-specific temperature, humidity and pressure ratio controls.

The Bridge Hospital has strict requirements for indoor air

In terms of fixed medical equipment, there were several demanding facilities. Thirteen identical operating rooms were built for demanding surgical and neurosurgical procedures. There are also three operating theatres that accommodate angiography. The Bridge Hospital will also be the first hospital in Europe to have a RAPTOR (Resuscitation with Angiography, Percutaneous Techniques and Operative Repair) operating room for trauma surgery. Fifty-eight identical intensive care stations were built, all with the capacity for treating neurosurgical patients as well.

An energy efficient hospital

In the MEP design, special attention was paid to energy and life cycle costs as the hospital has a large number of equipment and systems that consume electricity, and the air volumes are considerable. Investments in energy efficiency have included heat recovery and energy recycling solutions. More than 40% of the heating energy required by the building is obtained with the help of an energy recycling system.

Investments in energy efficiency have included heat recovery and energy recycling solutions

Coordination proves to be a challenge

Building information modelling (BIM) played a key role in the project. Modern hospitals feature challenging technical systems and automation and their coordination requires plenty of work between the parties. The Bridge Hospital’s advanced building information modelling facilitated cooperation and the management of the large amount of data.

The Bridge Hospital is Granlund’s first project where the wall diagrams were produced directly from a data model. This benefited both the design and the installation processes.

BIM also helped with the flexibility of the premises. Flexibility was taken into account in the scaling of technical facilities, technology shafts and installation facilities in such a way that central equipment and technical systems have the capacity for expansion and new builds.

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