Great Ormond Street Hospital – Lagoon Wash Up
Date added: 01/05/17
Located in the heart of Camden, Great Ormond Street Hospital is one of the world’s leading children's hospitals providing a round the clock service to children in need. There are a number of catering facilities within the hospital that provide a vital rolling service to patients, visitors and a number of staff every day.
The hospital recently began experiencing issues with their main wash up area in the Lagoon Restaurant, with the large rack conveyor machine having continuous results issues and numerous, expensive breakdown and repair costs. Mr Simon Clark, Head of Catering and Mr Keith Norris, Head of Facilities and Sustainability reached out for help after the staff at Great Ormond Street began having to spend hours per day hand drying as there was no air drying solution and repair costs became uncontrollable. The volume of manual hand washing due to breakdown was also incurring high labour costs.
The Hospital invited four different companies to review the area and propose a new solution. Three companies decided a like for like replacement was the solution, without any interaction with the operators or management of the area. Willis Jenkins were the first company that engaged with the operators in the area and asked questions about how they ran their operation and what they required moving forward. The team identified why the current solution wasn't working and advised on installing two new smaller machines to optimise the work space for the hospital. This would allow the items to be split between crockery and cutlery and a separate machine for the high volume of utensils and gastronorms being returned to the area.
The new installation included enabling works, new waste, water and power services being included within the quotation package, which reduced the requirement for the very busy GOSH facilities team to be involved.
Willis Jenkins always aim to advise on the bigger picture, and through the extensive site survey they identified that the vinyl floor in the facility was damaged and would cause further issues in the future. The hospital took on board the advice and found that the floor was much worse than originally anticipated but the obstacle was soon overcome by laying in a completely new floor, using an acrylic floor with anti-slip quartz added. The new floor is installed with a six year usage warranty and a ten year product failure warranty.
Due to unforeseen issues caused by excessive water damage from the leaking dishwasher, the original screed floor was dug out and replaced, with the new acrylic floor being laid later than expected but to the correct specification with the correct screed under. The programme went from 5 working days to a longer 11 day programme that included the new installed screed floor installation and drying time.
Once the new flooring was set, the team could install the new warewashing equipment into the facility, giving the space a new and more efficient layout as well as improving efficiency across the board. Simon Clark, Head of Catering said: “The project was completed quickly and to a great standard with minimal disruption to service. It’s a classy, well designed system that’s purpose built and hand fitted for the kitchen. There was nothing but positive key communication throughout the project. The team were working in a sensitive area positioned above operating theatres and went above and beyond to assure they caused minimal disruption, with great service.”
The equipment installed included a Meiko DV200.2GiOAC with 5 years `no bills’ warranty package with purpose fabricated dump table and sorting system, cleans table and hose-reel for cleaning. A Meiko DV125.2GiOAC with 5 years no bills warranty package, purpose fabricated dump table and cleans table with rack and chemical storage. A new Degafloor MMA floor and a new screed floor underneath replaced the existing solution that had blown out. As part of the flooring enabling works a 14 tonne delivery of materials to the restaurant took place and a temporary work space was screened off and sealed, which was used as an enclosed work space for the flooring installation.
