Modular Buildings - suitable for health use?

[The Don of Croy]

This comes to mind when we get the (not unusual) planning argument over a new doctors surgery. The practice has to find a suitable site and then design whatever will fit to suit their needs.

Is there not a way of producing a modular surgery? Rather like when a new McDonalds is delivered off the back of a lorry, partially kitted out, quick and easy build and presumably screwed down to a good price.

For a new doctors surgery they seem to have to design it from scratch (nice for architects etc but surely expensive?) or adapt another building (hardly the best way).

To be pragmatic, why not agree a standard layout (scaleable according to local catchment), and then have special planning rules to allow such a use for - say 40 years - on greenfield land.

It just seems odd for all the added pox when most communities would presumably want (or perhaps demand) the best facility available, with parking, that could be added at one end of town / village.

Am I barking?

[rover 623gsi]

http://www.rollalong.co.uk/healthcare.php

[The Don of Croy]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

But if McDonalds works on this principle, surely they don't cost so much?

We are talking doctors surgery here - not a mobile Moorfields Eye Hospital.

[Carfiend]

The Don of Croy said:

But if McDonalds works on this principle, surely they don't cost so much?

Public Sector Pricing.

[BoRED S2upid]

Its done for hospitals a friends dad made his money out of making them. Doctors practices may be a bit different to hospitals??

[hahithestevieboy]

Modular buildings are really no cheaper than other types. There are many advantages and disadvantages to them. Planners dont like them.

You could do doctor's surgerys this way (very suitable in fact). Pretty much any building can (within certain limits (usually size of individual rooms that have very high heights or wide spans).

The main reason that mcdonalds and the like use this method is speed. Time is money and particularly so on ultra high value retail land/premises. You can indeed build the thing in weeks (on site phase) and sometimes less. Whitness the speed and accuracy that shopfitters work at.

[ninja-lewis]

Apparently McDonalds' record is 13 hours from delivery of prefabricated parts at a prepared site to serving the first customer. But presumably McDonalds only use this method on large sits like retail parks or motorway services - city centre sites have to make do with the same furniture. As GP surgeries tend to be located in existing urban areas, modular design opportunities may be limited.

But the big difference between McDonalds and GP surgeries is that McDonalds is a single organisation with a strong emphasis on standardisation (hence the Economist's Big Mac Index). Whereas GP practices are nearly all separate small businesses run by multiple partners. So they all have their own idea of what a standard GP surgery looks like!

Also don't prefabricated buildings usually require non-standard mortgages? That may be an issue if the GP surgery has to fund the development that way.

[jules_s]

hahithestevieboy said:

You can indeed build the thing in weeks (on site phase) and sometimes less. Whitness the speed and accuracy that shopfitters work at.

Yep,

However, shop fitters invariably work in shifts 24/7 so you get speed at added cost

I've looked into modular at some depth in the last 12 months or so....at the moment i would say the companys offering this 'service' simply don't/can't offer the turn key solution thay claim to be able to. If the building is nice and square/rectangular maybe; anything else they just don't want to know

Also the mcDonalds of this world usually use a 'modular' solution on a dead flat site with easy access to it...the likes of LA projects aren't afforded that sort of luxury. More often it's the stty piece of land that the developer has left over that they can't viably build houses on

[a boardman]

I used to work for a modular building company and we used to build finished hospital buildings, this was 25 years ago.

[The Don of Croy]

jules_s said:

I've looked into modular at some depth in the last 12 months or so....at the moment i would say the companys offering this 'service' simply don't/can't offer the turn key solution thay claim to be able to. If the building is nice and square/rectangular maybe; anything else they just don't want to know

Also the mcDonalds of this world usually use a 'modular' solution on a dead flat site with easy access to it...the likes of LA projects aren't afforded that sort of luxury. More often it's the stty piece of land that the developer has left over that they can't viably build houses on

I'm glad someone else has looked at it.

Given the straightened times we are approaching, and the need for better / more accessible health care, then I would promote the use of a standardised solution. I was thinking of rural / semi rural communities where land is available, but outside the building envelope. Currently each and every surgery is a unique development, and I imagine the cost per sq ft is much greater than it needs to be.