Fulton Boiler Works has designed, manufactured, installed and commissioned a fully packaged steam plant room for Stoke Mandeville Hospital, CAD designed in three modules, for a recent major project

Fulton Boiler Works has designed, manufactured, installed and commissioned a fully packaged steam plant room for Stoke Mandeville Hospital, in what sales and marketing director Gordon Bareham believes is one of the largest projects in the company's history. The plant room, which is used to produce steam for autoclaves, heating and hot water in the new hospital, was designed and built to a very detailed specification to ensure that a minimum of site work would be required. Commenting for Fulton, project engineer David Tuey explains that the specification from Haden Young, which has building services responsibility within the joint venture that is currently undertaking a major reconfiguration of Stoke Mandeville, required the plant room to be prefabricated and fitted to a prepared concrete base measuring just 70m2.

Site access was also restricted so all connecting services needed to be pre-positioned very accurately.

To facilitate both manufacturing and delivery the plant room was designed by Fulton in three modular sections, using its latest CAD software to help position equipment, which included two horizontal RBC 1500 steam boilers, blowdown vessels, plate heat exchangers, circulating pumps and water treatment and chemical dosing systems.

The modules were then separated for delivery to the hospital and connected to site services.

The flues were then installed and erected and the three modules were joined together and sealed to prevent water ingress.

The RBC 1500 boilers are sized to operate on a duty standby basis to provide Stoke Mandeville Hospital with a highly efficient system which, Gordon Bareham claims, typifies the modern use of steam.

'Another benefit of manufacturing off-site was that Haden Young and its client Enterprise Health were able visit our Bristol factory to review the progress of the design on CAD and the actual plant room in the workshop.' Explaining the reasons why the Fulton design was chosen, Haden Young project manager Jon Hall says: 'This was a turnkey contract that Fulton was able to handle because the company isn't just a boiler manufacturer, it builds plant rooms.

Price and specification were obviously important issues but the innovative modular approach and prefabrication facilities at Fulton meant they were able to produce the plant room in just four months, which helped us to meet the project's very tight deadlines'.

He adds that Fulton value-engineered the design to better meet the specification and the application and, as a preferred supplier was also able to work with other Haden Young supply chain partners such as Nu-way, Spirax Sarco and Denco CN Insulations to meet the specification.