UK market leader Apex Wiring Solutions has won a £9 million contract to supply a modular wiring system for the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel as part of Barts and The London NHS Trust’s PFI funded redevelopment of hospital and healthcare facilities across the capital.
The company’s systems have been specified to cut electrical installation times, reduce onsite waste and provide a prewired factory tested power and lighting system.
Apex has also won a the multi-million pound contract to supply a pre-wired wiring system for the second phase of the Trust’s programme – the redevelopment of St Bartholomew’s Hospital (Barts) in the City – following the success of the Royal London work.
The Royal London Hospital is being rebuilt to include London’s leading trauma and emergency care centre, the capital’s second largest children’s hospital and one of Europe’s largest renal units, with London’s Air Ambulance operating from the top of the new building.
A pre-assembled and fully tested modular system has been specified instead of a more traditional conduit, trunking and hard wired system, eliminating the need for on site electrical connections and cutting the number of qualified electricians required to carry out the work.
The system features pre-wired factory tested pluggable distribution boards to supply lighting and high and low level power covering an area of 100,000 sq m.
The use of prefabricated connectors and preassembled cables to provide a high performance, reliable and flexible wiring solution has provided significant improvements over alternative systems, reducing onsite installation times by up to 70%.
The installation work is being undertaken by subcontractors and is expected to be completed by summer 2011, which is one year less than it would have taken with other systems.
The £1 billion redevelopment of The London and Barts is one of the largest public-private partnership programmes in Europe and is being undertaken by leading construction group Skanska UK, which specialises in PFI projects.
Dave King, project leader at Skanska UK, said: “Apex’s modular wiring systems offer huge time, money and environmental benefits and in my opinion show the way ahead for future large scale electrical installations,” said Dave King.
“Not only are the components easier to install but because they are preassembled offsite they cut waste levels significantly and reduce the number of skilled labour required on site to install installation, providing further significant labour and material cost savings.”
Dave Lewis, managing director of Apex, said: “The contracts for the Royal London and Barts are among the most prestigious we’ve won and reflect our ability to deliver added value, high quality, high performance solutions for major national and international construction projects.
“The cost, 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 having supplied systems to over 50 PFI and ProCure21 schemes totalling over two million sq m. Using its systems, a complete electrical installation can be achieved quickly and safely by plugging the system components together.
More at www.apexwiringsolutons.co.uk