Royal Derby heatwave struggles

The rooftop chillers at Royal Derby Hospital. Image from UHDB

Royal Derby Hospital had to ‘juggle’  its air conditioning abilities during recent heatwaves, prioritising those most in need, due to an unprecedented demand for energy.

Andrew Selby, estates and facilities director, said there simply was not enough electricity to provide cooling for the whole of the sprawling hospital campus, while continuing to supply energy to the site’s medical equipment and data requirements.

During the recent heatwaves, Mr Selby said the hospital focused efforts on maintaining ‘critical’ maximum temperatures in the pharmacy, mortuary, digital and intensive care departments.

He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the University Hospitals of Derby and  Burton NHS Foundation Trust had to ‘juggle’ air conditioning for the rest of the hospital “so everybody gets a bit of it”.

Mr Selby said the trust was always investing in its infrastructure, such as recently installed solar panels, but said there was only so much space on the sprawling Derby site – including a shortage of roof space, alongside the solar panels and helipad.

He said efforts were consistently being made to make the building “fit for the future” but that the hospital virtually hit its peak energy capacity output this summer already –  6.4mva, which roughly translates as 6.4mw – far in excess of typical years.

The trust lifted its huge chillers onto the six-storey rooftop of Royal Derby using a giant 500-tonne crane and built large awnings over the top of them to provide shade.

Mr Selby said: “We can’t just install air conditioning for all parts of the site, we wouldn’t be able to fit the plant or afford that.

“It is an incredibly large estate, the Derby site is very tall too and, as we know, heat rises.

“You need a lot of electricity to run a hospital.

“We are looking at air source heat pumps and ground source heat pumps but retrofitting air conditioning to all rooms is not a feasible task.

“It would be a fairly monumental task and cost billions of pounds.”

Mr Selby said the trust opted to reduce cooling in parts of the building depending on which times of the day they were less likely to be busy and provide more to those most heavily populated, effectively yo-yoing supply, but never leaving any department without any.

He said the trust ‘juggled’ power to maintain cooling below 25 degrees in pharmacy, 21 degrees in ICU and 18/20 degrees for the data and digital department.

Mr Selby said: “I am pleased that we had so many people come into the hospital and say ‘that is so much cooler than outside’ or ‘that is so much cooler than at home’.

“We managed it in the best possible way with patients at the forefront.

“It was challenging, it was hard. It did put us under pressure. It is hot and it is going to keep being hot and we make sure we patients have the best care possible.

“Our priority is keeping our hospitals open, keeping our patients as safe as possible and we did all that.

“We continued to treat thousands of patients and for the majority of patients, they will have known it was warm, but they wouldn’t have seen any other change in that period.”

Mr Selby said: “We knew the heat was coming but there is only so much preparation you can do. You can’t boost our cooling but we can focus on making sure it keeps cooling.”

He said some of the estate at Queen’s Hospital in Burton dates back to the 1880s, pre-NHS, while some parts still used for care date to the 1960s, saying this was not built to cater for 30+ degrees Celsius.

Royal Derby Hospital was built via a private finance initiative (PFI) by Skanska for £333 million, completed in 2009, to be paid off over 40 years.

Mr Selby said patients remained “safe and cared for” but were a “little bit warmer than normal” and that the trust had learned some valuable lessons for the future.

In last week’s trust board meeting, chair Prem Singh said: “We have had unbearable weather conditions and conditions for staff have not always been cool enough for them. The estate team pulled out all the stops within the constraints of the building to do as much as possible.”

Stephen Posey, chief executive, said: “We have had a period of exceptionally hot weather but we have maintained safe services in challenging conditions. We do know a number of patients and staff found the heat unbearable and we are sorry for that.”