This sector includes our work with health service trusts and residential care homes. It also includes reference to the property services we provide to local authorities to support them with the design, procurement and management of local community facilities such as town halls, community centres, museums, libraries and public leisure.
Our work within health has been largely centred around the provision of property consultancy services to Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and to public and private sector healthcare providers across the UK. This has included the provision of feasibility studies, building design, planned and reactive services maintenance as well as estate management.
Our experience with designing residential homes for older people is extensive and as a result we have a deep understanding of the requirements of such projects. Our designs work equally well for short-stay intermediate care and rehabilitation and for longer-term intensive acute care. This comes from our ability to understand both the functional and emotional needs of the people the buildings serve. We aim for our healthcare designs to convey a homely and welcoming feel that puts the residents at ease. A variety of different internal and external environments offer different levels of quiet and activity. It allows residents to exercise choice over the way they spend their time and align their lifestyle during their stay to their usual living patterns. Quality surroundings make it easier for residents to retain their independence, which helps them regain full health and promotes a speedy and happy return to their own homes.
We consult extensively with local health practitioners as part of the design process, so that our designs support their activities for the residents' benefit. Carefully considered internal and external layouts allow ‘casual physiotherapy’, whereby residents can exercise using routes of varying physical difficulty. The configuration of steps and ramps means that simply by moving around the building and gardens, residents are engaged in their rehabilitation therapy.
Our roots within the public sector have given us a strong awareness of the current agendas and drivers that affect other civic and community properties. Central to this is the need for us to help our clients achieve cost savings and demonstrable value for money. Our strategic asset management programmes aim to help our clients realise the full potential of their portfolios, and rationalise them where further efficiencies can be identified. We also provide energy management planning and management services. By negotiating with utilities providers on behalf of our clients, we are able to obtain significant savings over the energy costs they would be able to arrange individually.
At the same time we are able to deliver schemes for new community facilities that are not only efficient and functional, but also attractive and inspirational. Using our expert knowledge of modern low-energy building services, we are able to reduce the environmental impact of civic buildings. With this approach we can also investigate how additional project funds can be obtained by incorporating features that add to the sustainability of the scheme.
We aim for our civic buildings to be comfortable places that people genuinely want to visit. In this way we help our clients to transform the way that the local population use the facilities available to them. Our library designs, such as the award-winning Wymondham Library in Norfolk, have been instrumental in renewing the interest of the local population in reading and learning. In the time after the town’s library transferred to the new building, visits increased by 73%, book issues rose by 136%, and new library memberships rose by over 1,200%.