By installing temporary chillers during the refurbishment of the permanent system, the company ensured uninterrupted cooling for the hospital’s operating theatre and essential medical equipment. Princess Royal University Hospital was reliant on outdated cooling infrastructure, and needed a reliable and efficient replacement system to maintain precise temperatures for essential medical equipment, sensitive medications, and hospital environments. However, the chiller plant’s location on the hospital roof posed logistical challenges for dismantling the old equipment and transporting and installing the new. Additionally, providing a temporary cooling capacity of 1.8 MW was crucial to ensure seamless hospital activity during the refurbishment.
Given the challenges of the rooftop location, and due to the restrictions imposed on crane usage, the consultants’ specification deemed it necessary to flat-pack all the chillers for removal and installation. Vinci engineered and constructed an extensive scaffold from the ground-level compound to the roof, incorporating an integral hoist to facilitate the positioning of the equipment on site.
To maintain uninterrupted operation of the hospital’s critical systems and operating theatres throughout the project, ICS Cool Energy ‘leveraged its decades’ long expertise in temporary cooling solutions’. With a selection of 500 kW high-performance chillers readily available for hire and rapid deployment, the team quickly delivered and installed the three chillers as temporary support.
The complexity of the temporary installation was further amplified by the need for ‘hot tapping’ – attaching to a pipeline without depressurising or disrupting normal operations – which was crucial to putting the hire chillers in place, and provides immediate and reliable cooling during the transition.
For the final new cooling system, the team selected three 600 kW HVAC chillers featuring R513A low GWP refrigerant, meeting the hospital’s demand for capacity, performance, and efficiency, as well as future-proofing the equipment.
The meticulous flat-packing process involved disassembling the chillers into their components parts, starting with the removal of fans and panelling, and safely extracting refrigerant from the system. Each piece was carefully labelled to ensure accurate reassembly. After reassembly, the system was recharged with refrigerant, tested, and commissioned, following the completion of pipefitting, fluid filling, electrical supplies, and ducting. The old chillers were flat packed and taken down the same way.
ICS Cool Energy said: “The hospital operations continued uninterrupted, demonstrating our commitment to delivering a complete and reliable cooling solution in even the most challenging scenarios and tight turnaround requirements.”
Joe Murray, Project manager at ICS Cool Energy, said: “We have been working closely with Vinci and the Princess Royal University Hospital. This project was particularly challenging, with numerous logistical hurdles that the team navigated exceptionally well. From beginning to end, it was a collaborative effort, and we streamlined the process by providing a single point of contact for the customer, covering all aspects – hire, office, and on-site installation.”