The Spring Budget 2024 in March announced a £100 m funding package for AI, some of which will be channelled into the healthcare sector. It comes at an opportune time. Since COVID-19, there has been a distinct focus on improving both the number and quality of healthcare facilities in the UK. The Department of Health and Social Care is of course in the process of delivering a new National Hospital Programme, where this will be a huge focus. Embracing digital construction helps improve the delivery of these new hospitals and other healthcare projects. Digital tools can drive efficiency and support technical excellence throughout a build, and the data generated can underpin operations throughout the entire lifecycle of a building.
Digital construction tools improve the scale and level of accuracy possible for project delivery — something fundamental to ensuring both build quality and efficiency of delivery. Previously, project progress was assessed manually. For example, on the construction of the BEACH (Births, Emergency, and Critical care, children’s health) Building at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital, this could result in individual discipline and package managers walking an 8 km site each week for our IHP team (a joint venture between VINCI Building and Sir Robert McAlpine).
However, the process has been significantly accelerated by adopting tools such as Buildots — which uses helmet-mounted 360° cameras to capture images that AI then combines with BIM, schedule data, and 3D modelling, to produce an accurate picture of project progress.
BIM tools such as Dalux BIM viewer — bringing together floor plans, site capture, and models, can also make it easier to visualise complex interface details and understand construction sequencing. Augmented reality headset technology, like that trialled at IHP’s Kingsway Hospital — an adult acute mental healthcare facility in Derby, can then allow teams to superimpose BIM models on a structure that is either built or under construction. This can help improve the installation process for on-site teams, with significant time, materials, and cost benefits to the scheme. The tools are also very useful for stakeholders and clinicians during the planning stages of a project.
Meeting healthcare projects’ demanding criteria
Digital tools can also strengthen the delivery of the stringent criteria of healthcare projects. At Derby Kingsway, which incorporates a psychiatric intensive care unit, accuracy is paramount, and the project provided a well-suited backdrop for a trial of the HP Site Print robots, which help to reduce the time it takes to create floorplans and perform the function to an accuracy of three millimetres. The robots printed layout jobs on concrete decks ten times faster than traditional surveying methods.
The data that digital construction methods collect throughout a project is highly valuable. The Building Safety Act has made it a legal duty to provide accurate and up-to-date information on a building. Digital tools can help accurately capture, manage, and make accessible the data that provides the golden thread of information of what work was done at the various stages of a building’s lifecycle, and by whom, and so on.
The data collected during project delivery can also be highly valuable to the Trust and the end-user once the building has been completed. The Royal Bournemouth Hospital estate previously used the paper ‘logs’ commonplace across the NHS. However, project data collected throughout the build of the BEACH Building was handed over to the University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust to assist with the BEACH Building’s ongoing operation and maintenance. At the BEACH Building, digital tools will also increase safety mechanisms for babies in its new maternity facilities. Enhanced digital security will signal to the doors to lock automatically when triggered to ensure that babies are protected.
Cultural and educational advocacy
The benefits of digital construction to both contractor and client are clear, but the construction industry has long been considered slow to adapt to new working practices. To reap the rewards of digital methods and tools, companies need to ensure that their culture can embrace digitisation. This culture should make a conscious effort to embed digital tools in everyday working practice, and provide the right training for team members of all levels — from the Board to the trades, to the supply chain and beyond.
Ultimately, it is important companies understand that digital tools are not just the reserve of the digital construction team, but a part of the way we all go to work now. Digital tools should not be exclusive — for example, integrating Power BI (an interactive data visualisation software product) and site capture can make project data more accessible and useable for the wider team.
Digital construction’s benefits should also be communicated beyond those involved in internal engagement initiatives to ensure that the healthcare sector and construction industry are making the most of its potential benefits to their projects. Luckily, digital tools are good at fostering buy-in from the end-user. For example, at Derby Kingsway Hospital, the visualisation software, Twinmotion, allowed a range of stakeholders (such as nurses who will be working on the site) to feed back on the project design. Given that healthcare facilities are difficult to access after completion, and have a range of technical requirements to mitigate any safety risks, past the engagement benefits of these sessions, the insight of the end-user helped ensure the quality of the project. AI-generated reporting data can also boost the client’s confidence in project delivery by providing visual records.
A similar approach should be taken towards the supply chain: engaging the supply chain with digital construction methods and tools will support smooth project delivery and help change the wider industry for the better. Digital models of products can be integrated into visualisation software, and by requesting these models, contractors help to normalise this digital best practice. Suppliers without these models will ask themselves why, and likely be in a better position to engage with digital construction methods on the next project they supply.
Joint ventures
Joint ventures offer another prime environment for sharing best practice and encouraging industry engagement with digital construction methods, and IHP has promoted the use of advanced digital construction skills as part of the New Hospitals Cohort 2 Programme. The collaboration between businesses is a platform to share favoured tools and methods, ultimately improving both organisations’ approach to digital construction.
Looking to the future, firms can also play a part in developing the next generation of digital tools coming to the market by offering projects for on-site trials. AI, for example, is developing at pace, with myriad potential benefits for all industries, including construction, and it is workplace trials that help products refine their offering and become commercially viable. Several prototypes of HP Site Print were trialled at Derby Kingsway before the product launched to market.
The benefits of digital construction methods and tools on healthcare projects are clear cut. In a sector which demands quality and precision, these tools can help to improve the accuracy and efficiency of construction, providing design visualisations that engage the end-user, and allowing project teams to deliver right first time. Alongside project delivery, the data insight that these tools provide are also helpful to end-users’ ongoing building operation and management.
Digital construction is an exciting, potentially transformative, innovation for the industry. However, its benefits will not be enjoyed by the construction chain, or by healthcare sector clients and end-users, unless efforts to educate teams in the benefits of digital construction methods and train them in relevant skills make it ‘business as usual’. Past internal initiatives, and collaborative efforts — such as joint-ventures or on-site trials to help develop new digital tools, help with industry knowledge sharing and developing best practice (and developing the next generation of digital construction tools). Teams delivering healthcare projects and beyond will only reap benefits, as evolving digital construction practices free them up to focus on more complex engineering challenges.
Mark Gibson
Mark Gibson, managing director of Healthcare at Sir Robert McAlpine, has had a long and successful career in the construction industry. He started as a trainee at Sir Robert McAlpine in 1992, and achieved chartership through part-time education. After gaining experience in other companies, he rejoined Sir Robert McAlpine and rose to the position of Northern Region managing director. In 2023, he became MD of Healthcare, leading the delivery of complex and innovative projects in the healthcare sector. Mark is passionate about building strong relationships with clients, partners, and stakeholders, and delivering excellence in every aspect of his work.