Two Lift Modernisation for a Hospital

Two Hospital Lift Modernisations

The two lifts take patients, staff and equipment to and from the operating theatres. It is vital that the lifts work efficiently to ensure minimal disruption, and must be easy to sterilise to prevent the spread of bacterial infections like MRSA.

The previous lifts were installed nearly twenty years ago and although they had had some minor refurbishment work in the past, the lifts had some issues with performance and reliability.

The work undertaken on the modernisation project included:

Lift rewiring
Fitting of new safety gears
A new control panel with new auto-dialler system installed, to ensure that if there was an entrapment the people and equipment in the lift could be released as quickly as possible
New steel plates fitted under the lift car
New architraves fitted (interior moulding that sits around the doorway of the top of the lift)
Lift car refurbishment, including slip resistant flooring, stainless steel and sealed joints, which are easier to keep clean
New lift flooring – uplighting rather than downlighting, to avoid light shining into patients’ eyes when being transported on beds

The lifts were refurbished one at a time, so that one lift was always available for use.

The photograph shows the refurbished lift on right, unrefurbished on left.

Keeping the hospital safe & moving

To prevent unnecessary delays, we ordered all of the components required for the refurbishment before the project began.

Hoardings

As Pickerings Lifts was working in an active hospital setting, extra precautions were taken to ensure a safe, clean and hygienic environment. Full height hoardings were installed and sealed while engineers were working to reduce the amount of dust and noise produced.

Risk Assessment

Engineers and management staff were especially aware of the risk of contamination, and maintained good standards of infection prevention on site, including hand hygiene, the safe removal of waste, and ensuring that vehicles used to carry equipment on site were kept clean, as well as parking in the designated car parks and parking bays in order to prevent cross-contamination.