Most people walking around Saint Nicholas Hospital will have absolutely no idea that beneath their feet there are a series of underground corridors linking all the main buildings together. These corridors were constructed as part of the original building and house key services, such as cables and pipes. Tracey Sopp, our Managing Director, joined the estates team who manage and maintain these underground ducts.
Before heading underground, Tracey had an extensive safety briefing with Ross Errington, a member of the NTW Solutions Estates Team. Along with PPE, including a hard hat and boots, she was provided with various safety equipment, including a radio. The conditions underground require people to remain in contact with the estates team every five minutes to ensure their safety and well-being.
The ducts themselves are not a great working environment. They contain all of the pipes for the hospital’s central heating, making them very warm, and being underground, they are also damp. Access to the ducts is required for regular preventive and reactive maintenance, alongside contractors who may be carrying out maintenance on specific systems. Contractors who recently carried out extensive maintenance in the ducts wore nothing but coveralls and paper underwear to cope with the hot conditions.
Ross explained to Tracey the additional complications that come with maintaining a historic site such as Saint Nicholas Hospital. The majority of our sites are now made up of modern buildings, or certainly buildings younger than Saint Nicholas Hospital. Ross described having to contact Newcastle archives to get original documents and drawings for the hospital, whereas colleagues on other sites can look at the architect and construction designs and drawings.
Ross also described how there are developments taking place on the site at Saint Nicholas Hospital at the moment and how the estates team works with their capital development colleagues on those projects. He explained that although dealing with a historic building is complicated, sometimes modern buildings can be even more complicated because of the sophisticated systems they contain, providing a different range of challenges.
Ross started at NTW Solutions as an apprentice and has worked in various roles on many of our sites. He is proud of the work the team does to maintain Saint Nicholas Hospital. While working in the ducts is not always the most pleasant experience, they are the lifeblood of the hospital and the arteries that allow the work to go on upstairs. Although the work is unseen by its very nature, the team has a sense of achievement in supporting better care as they ensure that hospital services keep running.
