Designing a high-quality educational facility delivering a wide range of courses for health and allied professions

Health and Allied Professions Centre

The Health and Allied Professions Centre provides a wide range of courses in nursing and paramedicine. The building accommodates teaching spaces that simulate hospital clinical environments, general purpose teaching, academic staff spaces, administration staff spaces and ancillary support.

We’re incredibly excited that our new teaching centre is now open. The courses we’re providing will directly increase the supply of professional qualified staff into the NHS and related services, as well as providing a dedicated facility to allow greater opportunities for Continuing Professional Development for existing health practitioners within the local area.

Dr Anne Felton

Head of the Institute of Health & Allied Professions at NTU

As the university’s architect, we have been appointed to produce designs accommodating the wide range of facilities required, in compliance with the requirements of professional bodies the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the Healthcare Professional Council.

Designs were developed within a period of more than three months and required extensive engagement with different university stakeholders to understand the range of aspirations for the facilities, ensuring these were fully balanced within the design team’s proposals.

The retention of a 1960s building was required to connect existing education infrastructure into the new development and created additional challenges.

We led a series of stakeholder engagements, presenting proposals to user groups and capturing their feedback. Visits by the design team to the existing facilities on the campus were undertaken to further understand and establish the aspirations for the new Health and Allied Professions Centre.

The building was affectively designed with a modular structural grid and lightweight components for future flexibility and standardisation in space planning and project delivery. We designed the rear landscaped area as an area for social interaction, as well as creating an environment to simulate pre-hospital scenarios for paramedicine training including the establishment of an ambulance bay.

To bring the existing building into the modern age, we conducted an elevational study for the in which various external treatments were considered and presented for client feedback.

Through focused health and safety risk management workshops, the process of developing the Pre-Construction Information and Design Risk Management Register was undertaken through to tender stage. This included working with the other designers to develop their access and maintenance strategies and design risk assessments.