An Architecture graduate from Birmingham City University has helped design and build the NHS Nightingale Hospital in the ExCeL Centre in London.
An Architecture graduate from Birmingham City University has helped design and build the NHS Nightingale Hospital in the ExCeL Centre in London.
Alumnus Jordon Lambert supported the design of the hospital which was built to help expand NHS capacity to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
As an architect at Building Design Partnership (BDP), Jordon has worked predominately in the healthcare department on various projects, before receiving the call to work on the Nightingale Hospital project.
He said: “On arrival, we were briefed and told to deliver a facility for 500 intensive care unit (ICU) beds in just over a week. The facility needed capacity for 4,000 critical care beds over the coming weeks to ease the already struggling NHS infrastructure in its battle with the escalating coronavirus pandemic. When complete, this would be the largest ICU facility in the world.
“Due to the timeframe and the sheer scale of the task, solutions had to be simple and repeatable. Utilising and adapting material typically used by the ExCeL Centre for trade shows enabled the design and construction of the bed bays to be replicated quickly and safely, as the construction team were familiar with the product.”
Jordon continued: “Having the design, construction and clinical team working in-house ensured that issues could be identified and resolved in a much more efficient workflow, allowing decisions to be made rapidly. I believe this to be a huge kudos to the construction industry as a whole – it can achieve great things when everyone truly collaborates towards the same goal.
“The team, both at BDP and as a whole, has been incredible. With a mutual understanding of what we were working towards, the team has rolled their sleeves up and put in crazy hours of work to provide the best possible facility for the incredible NHS staff on the frontline.
“As an architect, being part of this huge collective effort to provide these tools for the NHS to better fight this thing, will hands down be the most important project of my career and an experience that I am extremely honoured and proud to have worked on.”
