Page 15 - NewsLester Issue 02

NHS & PUBLIC BUILDINGS
LIFT MODERNISATION AT THE UK’S LARGEST NHS HOSPITAL
St George’s Hospital in Tooting, London is the largest NHS hospital in the UK, serving a population totalling around 3.5 million people. Manged by the St George's University Hospital’s NHS Foundation Trust, it is also one of the UK's largest teaching hospitals with 1,300 beds and employing 8,500 staff.
St George's Hospital has several
centres of excellence, one being the internationally renowned Atkinson Morley Neurosciences Centre. As a large unit, the Atkinson Morley Centre has its own
wing at the hospital, served by a triplex group of five-stop lifts.
During the latter part of 2020,
Lester Controls were approached
by the lift contractor working at the Atkinson Morley Centre to assist with
a lift modernisation project due to
be undertaken. The project related to staggered modernisation all three of the centre’s lifts.
Working in partnership with the lift contractor’s project team, we
assisted with the specification
for the three ALMEGA II traction controllers, manufactured to comply to the requirements of the EN81 A3 unintended movement amendment, and integration with both the retained and new equipment.
Apart from the ALMEGA II controllers, we also supplied a full modernisation shaft kit including LS0H flexes, CEDES absolute positioning system, car top control, TFT43 LCD indicators and voice synthesiser.
URGENT SUPPORT TO GET CROYDON’S NHS MOVING AGAIN
There is never a good time for an essential lift to break down, which was exactly the case when one of Croydon University Hospital’s lifts failed. This essential lift to ensure patients being treated in the hospital’s Elective Centre could be taken to theatres for surgery whilst staying within a protected COVID-19 free zone.
Our customer, encountered a number of clear issues relating
to the age of the controller, including outdated technology
and failing components. Working with our client, the controller panel was brought to our test room in Croydon to establish if anything could be done to refurbish it, but due to the parts being decommissioned over the years, this was not a viable option.
As a result, in consultation with Jackson Lifts, the decision was made to immediately manufacture a replacement ALMEGA II Xpress controller to allow this essential lift to return to service with the urgency needed.
We delivered the controller to the hospital, with our customer pulling out all the stops to reinstate the lift, allowing patients coming on site for planned care and surgery to once again safely and easily move around the Croydon Elective Centre.
NEWSLESTER Issue 2 :: Page 15