Elta Provide Healthy Collaboration on Largest Ever NHS Project in Scotland

Kingswinford-based manufacturer, Elta has supplied fans and equipment to the largest NHS construction project ever undertaken in Scotland. A new acute hospital for NHS Forth Valley, is currently under construction in Larbert, a small town 5 miles (4.0 km) northwest of Falkirk, the main town in the Forth Valley area.

Acute hospitals provide a diverse range of specialist care and treatment for patients. Typically, services include: consultation with specialist clinicians; emergency treatment; routine, complex and life saving surgery; specialist diagnostic procedures; observation and short-term care of patients with worrying symptoms. The first phase of the Forth Valley Royal Hospital is now complete and the hospital opened its doors to patients in August 2010.

The new-build, £300m facility will be one of the most modern and well equipped hospitals in Europe. Equipment supplied by Elta was mostly from the SELECT range, one of the widest available directly from stock. It included two Powerduct SPD fans, a Multiflow SMB, six SmokeVent LCS fans, a Quietflow Twin, two JetFlow fans, along with twenty special centrifugal fans sourced from Fans & Spares Limited Glasgow.

The Powerduct SPD range of robust, duct-mounted, square-cased, in-line centrifugal fans is designed to deliver high performance with low noise characteristics. Multiflow SMB is Elta’s range of square-cased, mixed-flow fans with adjustable-pitch, mixed-flow impellers, for use within ductwork. SmokeVent is for general ventilation plus emergency smoke extract and Quietflow SQT is the acoustically treated, in-line, centrifugal twin-fan range, intended for internal mounting in buildings with low ceiling voids, where fans are close to building occupants. Jetflow is one of the most extensive ranges of all metal in-line centrifugal fans and, again, provides high performance in either extract or supply applications.

As Elta only make metal fans, Elta’s Stuart Johnstone approached Alan Burns at Fans & Spares Limited, another national ventilation distributor and part of the Systemair group since 2004 with a request for an unusual collaboration. The Glasgow office, headed by Mr. Adrian Park, was more than happy to supply the twenty, 315mm plastic, in-line, duct fans that were needed to complete the order for the Forth Valley hospital. Mr. David Renwick of the project’s services providers, Crown House Technologies, one of the UK’s principal building services providers and a leading prefabricator of modular services, said: ‘We have a very good relationship with Elta. As well as supplying their equipment and sourcing the twenty, plastic, in-line, duct fans for the project, they also agreed to Fans & Spares Limited being the single point of contact close to site in Glasgow, liaising with them closely in order to simplify the purchasing process for us. Both suppliers also responded very quickly whenever site visits were required to assist us during installation.’

The NHS Forth Valley area has a population of nearly 280,000 and covers a geographic area from Killin and Tyndrum in the North and Strathblane and Bo’ness in the South, incorporating a mixture of rural and urban areas. Forth Valley Royal will include a mental health facility and a women & children’s unit. It will have 860 inpatient and day beds, sixteen operating theatres, twenty-five wards and 4,000 rooms. It will cover an area the size of nine football pitches and will eventually feature the UK’s first robotic supply and delivery system, Scotland’s first fully robotic pharmacy system and high-tech kitchens. The new hospital will replace Falkirk, and, Stirling Infirmaries and services will transfer across in a number of stages over the next year starting with services from Falkirk and District Royal in August 2010. The Minor Injuries Unit in Falkirk and the A&E Department in Stirling will continue to operate as normal until July 2011 when these services will move across as part of the final phase.

The new hospital is set in stunning surroundings in a largely parkland setting with mature woodland, ponds, landscaped courtyards and a visitor garden. It offers spectacular views across the Forth Bridges, the Lomond Hills and the Ochils.

Elta is part of the £85 million Elta Group, a family of businesses with operations in six countries on four continents which, together with a network of international distributors, provides quality fans and related air movement equipment to customers worldwide.