Apex Wiring Solutions has won a multi million pound contract to supply a modular wiring system for a new £430 million state-of-the-art hospital 800 bed hospital being built by Carillion for the North Bristol NHS trust at Southmead.
The hospital, which will be one of the most environmentally friendly buildings of its type when it opens in 2014, will have 75 % single bedrooms, improving patient privacy and helping to control the spread of infections. There will also be a number of single-sex four-bed wards available.
Modular wiring has been specified for the new build to cut electrical installation times, reduce onsite waste and provide a prewired factory tested power and lighting system. The Apex system will also be utilised on pre-wired factory tested pluggable distribution boards to supply lighting and high and low level power for the hospital.
Over the next 12 months, more than £3m worth of pre-assembled and fully tested modular components will be produced at Apex’s Durham manufacturing facility and supplied to several nominated M&E contractors to ensure the tight build programme is achieved.
Dave Lewis, managing director of Apex, said the use of prefabricated connectors and preassembled cables provides a high performance, reliable and flexible wiring solution which delivers significant improvements over hard wired systems, reducing onsite installation times by up to 70%.
He added: “Southmead Hospital will be another highly prestigious contract win for us, reflecting our ability to deliver added value, top quality, high performance solutions for leading national and international construction projects.
“The time saving and environmental benefits of modular wiring systems are becoming increasingly recognised in the UK, enabling electrical contractors to complete even the most complex installations quicker and more efficient than ever before.”
Apex has established a leading position in the UK healthcare market for electrical wiring products, supplying systems to over 50 PFI and ProCure21 schemes totalling more than two million sq m. Using its systems, a complete electrical installation can be achieved quickly and safely by plugging the system components together.
Systems are designed to customer specification using the latest PC software before being manufactured offsite in a quality controlled environment using the latest high performance components and sub-assembly techniques.
Modular wiring systems can also provide improved health and safety because they minimise the amount of time contractors are required to work at height while also reducing the need for onsite cable and conduit cutting tools which can cause accidents.
