06 HEALTHCARE FOCUS - WSP Group

March2012
06
Healthcare
focus
10
14
15
on site at Bond
Street Station
testing sweden’s
metal
the secret life
of bridges
UNITED
BY OUR
DIFFERENCE

the
Firsts
PAGE
At WSP, we’RE united
BY our passION for
INNOVATION and our
PIONEERING sPIRIT. here
ARE just a few of our
LATEst breakTHROUGHs.
Vodafone
Innovation Centre
The first six-star
building in AfrICa
The Vodafone Site Solutions Innovation
Centre in Midrand, South Africa, has just
been accredited by the Green Building
Council of South Africa to become the
first building in Africa to receive the
highest, six-star rating under its Green Star
sustainability rating system. WSP provided
structural, mechanical, plumbing and
drainage, and sustainability engineering
services to the centre, which includes an
array of innovative technologies and will
be used to develop alternative solutions to
help reduce carbon emissions across the
Vodafone group’s worldwide operations.
simon.berry@wspgroup.co.za
the 200th Green Star
in australia
WSP’s specialist environmental design
consultancy in Australia has just secured
its 200th Green Star under the Australian
Green Building Council’s accreditation
system. The team provided environmental
sustainable design on the redevelopment
of 500 Bourke Street in Melbourne,
Victoria, a 1970s office tower covering
47,000m². The building has now secured
a five-star rating, making it the largest
refurbished building to achieve a
five or six-star rating. The project was
also exceptional in that the base build
and fit-out refurbishments were carried
out at the same time, and because tenant
National Australia Bank remained in
occupation throughout the works.
david.jarratt@wspgroup.com.au
AfrICa’s
greenest hotel
Arrivals at Cape Town International
airport will soon be able to check into
the greenest hotel on the continent, the
143-room Hotel Verde. Because the
South African Green Star scheme does
not yet include a rating tool for hotels, the
project is instead registered under the US
LEED system, with the aim of achieving a
gold rating. WSP will provide ICT design
services. The project will incorporate
many sustainable features such as a
geothermal heating, ventilation and air
conditioning system, greywater recycling,
photovoltaic panels, movement-sensorcontrolled
lighting and energy-efficient
appliances.
mark.behrmann@wspgroup.co.za
Europe’s most
modern airport
WSP Germany is delivering Berlin
Brandenburg International airport, a
completely new facility that will replace
all three of Berlin’s existing airports when
it opens in June 2012. As if managing
every aspect of the 1,470ha project was
not challenging enough, the 77-strong
WSP team also had to carry out a major
redesign to incorporate new screening
equipment when new EU security rules
were announced midway through the
construction phase. This means that BBI
will be the first airport to use the new
technology – a test case for other airports
around the world.
christine.roenisch@wspcbp-berlin.de
THE INFOTOWER AT
BERLIN BRANDENBERG
INTERNATIONAL
AIRPORT
500 Bourke Street,
Melbourne
The UK’s first
“coMMunityfacing
prISon”
WSP has been appointed as part of
a Skanska-led team to deliver a new
prison in Peterhead, Scotland, which will
accommodate 500 inmates across three
cell blocks and a community rehabilitation
unit. Designed to hold all classes of
offender, Grampian Prison will be the
UK’s first custom-built “community-facing
prison”. WSP will provide a full range of
design services including environmental,
civil and structural, infrastructure, building
services and acoustics.
alistair.mclean@wspgroup.com
02 solutions

solutions March 2012
CONTENTs
04 NEWs
06 HEALTHCARE focus
10 ON SITE AT BOND Street Station
14 ssAB Steelworks, sWEDEN
15 THE sECRET life of bridges
16 PosTCARD from… Doha
Front cover
Great Ormond Street Hospital
Photo: Nicola Evans, WSP Group
Editor
Bridget Kennerley
WSP Group Communications
bridget.kennerley@wspgroup.com
Designed and produced by
Supreme Creative
www.supremecreative.co.uk
Written and edited by
Wordmule
www.wordmule.co.uk
This issue of Solutions coincides with the
announcement of WSP’s results for 2011, and
once again our performance proved resilient in
the face of varied and often challenging markets.
Our private sector activities showed some improvement, though constraints
remain on confidence and funding across the general landscape. With the
exception of the UK, the public sectors in the regions in which we work generally
improved as the year progressed.
In this month’s magazine we highlight two markets in which we are increasing
our engagement worldwide – healthcare and rail. Our focus on healthcare
reflects our growing global reputation – leading to our recent success in winning
Odense Hospital, Denmark’s largest ever hospital project, among others –
and demonstrates our pioneering work in the UK, US, Sweden, Germany and
Australia. We also feature one of our flagship rail projects, Bond Street Crossail
station in London, where we are lead consultant. Further significant appointments
from both Crossrail and Network Rail have followed in the UK, including our role
as lead design consultant on the redevelopment of London Bridge station and,
more recently, a place on not one but two frameworks for the new high-speed
London to Birmingham rail link.
Client care is a key pillar of our business strategy, and a theme that runs through
every story in the magazine. Whether we are designing a complex steelworks
refurbishment in Sweden, running structural diagnostic tests on bridges in the
US, masterplanning sustainable cities in Scandinavia or engineering high-rise office
and hotel developments in Asia, our priority is to understand and respond to our
clients’ business requirements with the very best solutions.
I hope you enjoy this insight into just a few of our many, varied projects around
the world, and I look forward to telling you more about our work in other
markets and sectors as the year progresses.
Chris Cole
CEO, WSP Group plc
solutions 03

news for
ThIS issue… creating future cities
in sweden and finland, gearing
up for high-speed rail in the uk,
and deSIgning A DANCIng BRIdge
china
H+, Helsingborg
WSP to desIGN susTAINABLE
CITIEs across Scandinavia
Our teams in Sweden and Finland have won a series of prestigious
commissions to create new sustainable districts in Scandinavian cities.
Their expertise will help the cities to address their future energy
needs, reduce waste and adopt principles of wider sustainability.
In Finland, WSP won a competition to
develop a masterplan for a sustainable
community and local food cluster in the
Sibbesborg area of Sipoo, just 30 minutes
by metro from Helsinki city centre. This will
eventually be home to more than 60,000
residents. WSP’s vision for the district
is as a cluster of carbon-neutral urban
villages, promoting nature, healthy living
and agriculture. “Sustainability for Sipoo will
not just mean a small carbon footprint but
on board
FOR two UK
HIGH-sPEED rail
FRAMEWORks
also maintaining and advancing the natural
environment, socioeconomic and cultural
strengths, and values of the community.
Our understanding of this is one of the
reasons we won,” said Katriina Rosengren,
WSP’s project manager for the project.
Meanwhile, in Sweden, WSP beat 10 other
consultants to secure one of the country’s
most exciting city renewal projects, in
the city of Helsingborg. H+ will be a new
district in the city centre’s southern part,
WSP has secured a place on two of the four
six-year frameworks to provide engineering
and environmental services for the delivery
of High Speed 2, a new rail link from London
to Birmingham. In total, 13 consultants
were appointed across the four different
frameworks, but WSP was one of a select few
to be listed in two sections. The team scored
highly on both technical and commercial
aspects of the bid, reflecting WSP’s growing
and WSP is working with the energy
company Öresundskraft to develop a
sustainable energy system, covering energy,
waste and water. It will be based on
renewable sources and will be both energypositive
and cost-neutral on an annual basis.
WSP Sweden is also developing a carbonpositive
energy and waste roadmap for the
new Royal Seaport district in Stockholm,
under the Clinton Climate Initiative,
established by the former US president to
find solutions to climate change. These new
assignments build on WSP Sweden’s earlier
experiences such as the Brunnshög project
in Lund and earlier phases of the Stockholm
Royal Seaport project.
katriina.rosengren@wspgroup.fi
agneta.persson@wspgroup.se
expertise and reputation in the UK rail
sector, developed over projects including the
redevelopment of London Bridge station,
the new Bond Street Crossrail station, the
recently completed Paddington Station Span 4
refurbishment, and Edinburgh’s Waverley
station. To find out more about WSP’s lead
design role on Bond Street, turn to page 8.
dave.darnell@wspgroup.com
04 solutions

PROJECT WINS
DANCING BRIDGE
Wuxi, CHINA
Paddington Station, London
Awards
PADDINGTON
AND EMIRATEs
TEAMS SCOOP
TOP PRIZES
WSP has won the Institution of
Civil Engineers’ Historic Bridges
and Infrastructure Award for
the design of the refurbishment
of the Grade I-listed Paddington
station in London, completed in
2011. WSP was commissioned
by Network Rail in 2007 to
undertake a feasibility study
to strengthen and refurbish
part of the roof, originally
completed in 1854.
The team, based mainly in
the Basingstoke office, worked
closely with the client and
English Heritage, continuing
throughout the outline and
detailed design stages, and as
lead consultant for contractor
Morgan Sindall during the
two-year construction.
peter.newman@wspgroup.com
WSP has been named
Consultant of the Year for 2011
at the annual awards of the
United Arab Emirates’ National
Transportation Authority, held
in Abu Dhabi in January. The
NTA is the federal agency
that covers links between
the Emirates themselves and
neighbouring countries, with
which WSP has a strategic
partnership spanning several
projects.
gurminder.sagoo@wspgroup.ae
CHINA
Professionals across WSP Asia’s
Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong
Kong offices have been working
together to deliver a commercial
project by Suning, one of the
largest electrical appliance retailers
in China. The Suning Yi Gou B2C
project is located in the Xuan Wu
district of Nanjing City, and has
a total floor area of 216,000m².
WSP will be providing building
services, sustainability and LEED
consultancy.
sidney.chan@wspgroup.com.hk
Sweden
WSP has been commissioned
by the municipality of Umeå,
IKEA and IKANO Retail
Centres to produce preliminary
designs for a key part of a new
retail park to the south of the
city. The contract includes
carrying out geotechnical
investigations and producing
designs for roundabouts, cycle
tracks and footpaths, water and
wastewater facilities, parks and
car parks.
tomas.widerstedt@wspgroup.se
SRI LANKA
WSP Hong Kong has been
appointed as building services
and LEED consultant on a new
Shangri-La Hotel in Colombo,
the latest in a number of projects
it has delivered for the luxury
chain. The hotel will be located
along Galle Road, south of
the central business district,
and includes hotel rooms and
serviced apartments covering
101,686m².
jackson.kwong@wspgroup.com.hk
QATAR
WSP Middle East, in joint
venture with Khatib & Alami,
has been awarded a major
infrastructure contract by the
Qatari Public Works Authority,
ASHGHAL. The $90m contract
is to provide engineering
consultancy services for all local
roads and drainage across the
north of the country for a
five-year period.
To read more about WSP’s
growing business in Qatar,
turn to page 16.
andrew.seymour@wspgroup.com
WSP’s bridge experts in Finland
and PES-Architects have won
a competition to design a new
pedestrian bridge in Wuxi,
China. The steel and concrete
cable-stayed bridge will span a
small lake close to a new bullet
train station in the central park
of the Huishan New City area.
It is suspended from inclined
pylons that resemble two dancers
and has a gentle S-bend which,
according to Chinese tradition,
ensures a traveller will face no
danger as it makes evil spirits lose
their way. The bridge is expected
to open later in 2012.
sami.niemela@wspgroup.fi
US
WSP Cantor Seinuk has been
commissioned to design a new
40-storey Marriot Courtyard
and Residence Inn in New York,
in downtown Manhattan at 213
Pearl Street. The architect for the
175,000ft 2 building is Nobutaka
Ashihara, and the client is Lam
Golden Pearl Plaza Hotel.
tbyrne@wspcs.com
Lam Golden Pearl Plaza Hotel LLC / Nobutaka Ashihara
solutions 05

healthcare focus
A look inside WSP’s medical files reveals
a wide array of world-class healthcare facilities.
The next four pages feature some of our
recent success stories in Europe, the US
and Australia, while overleaf, one of our
design partners in New York shares his
thoughts on good hospital design.
case
hisTORIEs
In a company with so many large and innovative projects
around the world, there is bound to be a bit of intra-firm
rivalry about whose are the most challenging to pull off. But
Paul Stanley, director of property and development in WSP
UK’s healthcare team, thinks he has a few trump cards.
“My colleagues might say a tall building is complicated, but
there is no more complicated building than a hospital,” he says.
“There are critical care wards, operating theatres, and all the
issues around the spread of infection. The power supply has
to be resilient, as does the water. We don’t just have M&E to
deal with, but medical gas supplied to every bed. From a fireengineering
point of view, evacuating a hospital is not like an
office – you’ve got people in beds, people on machines. That’s
what makes a hospital a bit different. At the end of the day, if
the services that go into the building don’t work, people die.”
A laboratory is considered a difficult project in its own right –
in healthcare, it will be one small but crucial aspect. Before you
even reach the construction stage, there will be a mountain of
legal and financial paperwork, depending on which variant of
government finance or PFI is currently in vogue. A hospital’s
transport strategy must accommodate not only patients,
visitors and ambulances, but possibly helicopters landing on
the roof. And finally, Stanley adds, “nine out of 10 hospitals
are built on existing sites, where patients and staff are moving
backwards and forwards all day long”.
Stanley and his team are well practised in overcoming these
difficulties. Over the last 10 years, WSP UK has completed
many healthcare projects, from building a brand-new hospital
to extending or refurbishing a single ward. Its reputation for
delivering large hospital projects was sealed with the success
of the £300m Forth Valley Acute Hospital, completed in 2011.
WSP staff have just celebrated the opening of the £350m
North Staffordshire University Hospital, and are playing a key
role on the ongoing refurbishment of Great Ormond Street
Hospital in London, not due for completion until 2025. “We
can provide all of the engineering services that are required on
a hospital,” says Stanley. “Not just structural or M&E, but fire,
acoustics, vertical transport, urban planning, traffic, transport.
Our biggest selling point is that we’ve got all of the engineering
skills you need under one roof and an excellent track record.”
Now WSP is delivering one of the UK’s largest-ever healthcare
projects – New South Glasgow Hospitals, worth £840m.
Contained in a single building, it has a floor area of 172,000m 2 ,
equivalent to 24 football pitches. A jumbo jet would fit
comfortably inside the atrium. “This dwarfs anything that has
been built before,” says WSP’s project director Pete Dunbar,
based in the Glasgow office. “It will be the biggest building in
Scotland by a long way. The nearest is the Edinburgh Royal
Infirmary, and that’s only 120,000m².”
The campus includes a 14-floor adult hospital, with 1,109
beds mostly in single, en-suite rooms, and a 256-bed children’s
hospital. WSP is responsible for the main building – being
constructed alongside the existing Southern General Hospital
on the south bank of the Clyde – and the 2,400kW capacity
energy centre that will supply it. Together, they are worth
£650m. “It’s not just a new hospital in south Glasgow, it’s a reevaluation
and review of how healthcare will be provided across
the west coast of Scotland,” says Dunbar. “When it’s complete,
this will be the largest healthcare campus in Europe, providing
maternity, paediatric and acute services on a single site.”
The greatest challenge has been coordinating the vast amount
of information that goes into a building of this size, to ensure it
remains on programme. WSP is working with Brookfield, which
pre-qualified in early 2009 and was appointed preferred bidder
in January 2010. A year of design work followed, including a
consultation with clinical staff which brought significant changes,
before the first piles were installed in March 2011. “We started
on site very quickly, but the integrated design was lagging due
to the changes that arose during the clinical consultation,”
this will be the largest
HEALTHCARE campus in
EUROPE, providing maternity,
PAEDIATRIC and acute sERVICEs
ON a sINGLE sITE
says Dunbar. “That meant we had to work with Brookfield
to build in more flexibility while those elements of the design
developed.” The structural frame is now well under way, with
three of the main cores at full height, and will be complete by
August 2013.
The project has so far involved staff from seven different
WSP offices: Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Stockton, Leeds,
Dublin, London and Delhi. “No business outside London has a
team big enough to deal with a project of this size in one office.
This has been a major team effort.”
paul.stanley@wspgroup.com
peter.dunbar@wspgroup.com
06 solutions

Great Ormond Street Hospital
Morgan Stanley Clinical Building
Photo: Nicola Evans, WSP Group
the paSSIV treatment
HELMUT G WALTHER HosPITAL, Bavaria, GERMANY
WSP Germany is delivering one of the country’s first “green”
hospitals, a replacement for the Helmut G Walther Hospital
in Bavaria Lichtenfels. Designed by Munich architect Schuster
Pechtold Schmidt, it consists of two square buildings connected
by a central lobby and a treatment and examination area.
Construction is due to begin later this year, completing in 2016.
Project manager Wolfgang Grossmann believes this is a very
special project: “We have a unique opportunity to create a new
model in clinical buildings, achieving high standards in ecology,
cost efficiency and quality right from the planning phase.”
A committee of architects, landscape architects, civil engineers,
building physicists, ecologists and medical experts was
convened to discuss every element of the building’s design
and delivery, alongside the building owners and the planning
authorities. The result was a 100-page action plan, at the
cutting edge of research and technology. “We’ve taken a
holistic approach to the entire process,” says Grossmann.
“Sustainability starts with the management of the construction
site, and continues during the operational phase of the hospital.
For example, we involved a hospital hygienist who advised us
on the most environmentally friendly disinfectants and how
to minimise the amount of disposable material. This has often
required completely new solutions.”
Aiming for the highest, “gold” rating under the German
Sustainable Building Council’s system, the hospital will use far
fewer resources than conventional buildings. “The goal was to
meet the PassivHaus standard,” says Grossmann. “So we were
aiming for as close as possible to energy self-sufficiency. Due
to the high energy requirements of medical devices, that can’t
be fully implemented, but during times of surplus the hospital
can export the energy it
produces back to the grid.”
The building has high levels
of insulation and triple-glazed
windows, of course, but the
walls also feature advanced “phase
change materials” that store heat
energy and release it slowly to maintain a
comfortable temperature in treatment areas.
The hospital will generate its own energy from a range of
sources, including geothermal energy for heating and cooling
and a biomass boiler to produce steam for sterilisers, ventilation
systems and the kitchen. Photovoltaics will play a prominent
role, with panels on the roofs and in the facades, while the
buildings are oriented to receive maximum sunlight.
The facade also makes the best possible use of natural light.
Integrated, movable shading will shield glare while directing
sunlight to the rear of patients’ rooms. Elsewhere, the hospital
will use energy-efficient LED and OLED lights, with occupancy
sensors to turn them off when rooms are unused.
It is these “smart” elements of the building that present the
greatest challenge, says Grossman. “A decentralised energy
supply requires complex measurement and control systems
to carry out targeted peak load management – shutting down
energy-intensive facilities automatically, for example – and to
ensure the intelligent use of waste heat. Because WSP has many
decades of experience, we are perfectly suited to coordinating
the various disciplines and areas of responsibility.”
wolfgang.grossmann@wspgroup.de
Image courtesy of mw2 / Schuster Pechtold Schmidt Architekten
solutions 07

healthcare focus
BIM’s the prescription
Sahlgrenska HosPITAL,
GOTHENBURG, sWEDEN
Sahlgrenska Hospital’s new Centre of Image and
Intervention will use the very latest diagnostic technologies
to detect diseases such as cancer and heart disease at
an early stage, providing patients with better care and
reducing the need for major surgery. Due to open in 2015,
the SEK1.3bn building will include operating theatres with
imaging technologies such as x-ray, ultrasound and magnetic
resonance, a cyclotron with hot lab for treating cancers, and
a central sterilisation supply department.
Such complex project calls for the latest construction imaging
technology too. WSP is lead consultant for structures,
electrical, geotechnics, surveying and acoustics, providing a
multidisciplinary team with not only a great deal of experience
of designing healthcare facilities, but of using Building
Information Modelling (BIM) to deliver these projects.
“One of the main challenges on this project is a huge amount
of equipment that must be fitted into a very confined space,”
explains Henrik Carlsson, department manager at WSP
Construction Design in Gothenburg. “The accuracy of the
data is therefore crucial, and the ability to visualise the project
provides an
environment for
testing before construction
– essential to avoid expensive mistakes.”
BIM has been used throughout the design
as a common platform between the architect, WSP’s
structural and electrical engineers, and the building services
engineers too. The model incorporates a number of different
software packages, such as TeklaStructures and Solibiri, used to
detect clashes between different elements of the building. The
whole design is carried out in three dimensions and imported
into a common model using open-source IFC code.
Using BIM has not only enabled the design partners to solve
problems early in the design process, saving both time and
money, it is also been invaluable in many workshops between
the client and the design team, says Carlsson: “The model
helps everyone to work within the engineering constraints to
provide the best possible solution to the medical requirements
of the project.”
henrik.c.carlsson@wspgroup.se
A healthy dose of solar energy
ECHUCA REGIONAL HosPITAL, Victoria, AusTRALIA
WSP is breaking new ground in hospital design at the Echuca
Regional Hospital in Victoria, Australia, where it has designed
the country’s largest array of evacuated tube solar collectors.
The hospital has been in operation since 1882, and could no
longer run some of its older, most inefficient air-conditioning
equipment on very hot days. “Our primary objective was to
reduce the overall power consumption,” explains Marthinus
Noyce, associate director at WSP in Melbourne. “The target
was a necessity, it wasn’t only to reduce their emissions.”
The solar hot water collectors provide hot water at a
temperature of 95°C to an absorption chiller, which allows the
hospital to reduce the use of an existing air-cooled electric
chiller, meeting the building’s demands without expensive
upgrades to its energy supply. The project was funded partly
by Sustainability Victoria, which supports
innovative pilot projects. With a solar
field covering 300m² and a peak
design output of 220kW, the roofmounted
panels were intended
to reduce the building’s
electricity consumption by
1,373MWh per year. Now
operational for 14 months,
initial indications show it has
exceeded the target, and
that it will cut greenhouse
gas emissions by around
1,400 tonnes per year.
The Melbourne office has designed several cooling plants
using absorption chillers connected to waste heat sources,
but this was their first solar chilling project. It was also one of
the first projects they had delivered using BIM technology for
every aspect, which made for a steep learning curve. The solar
field and mechanical plant were modelled using Autodesk
Revit software, enabling the team to prepare presentationgrade
graphics and videos. “Preparing technical information in
understandable manner to present the various stakeholders
was one of our biggest challenges,” says Noyce. “We found BIM
was an excellent tool for providing a realistic virtual view that
non-technical people could understand.”
The team found themselves specifying equipment that was
not readily available in Echuca, and originally their favoured
technology was from the US and had not been tested in
Australia before. “In the end, we opted for existing technology
which the funder was comfortable with,” says Noyce. “We
produced a design that the client was able to implement with
confidence, and which has still yielded the paybacks we needed.
This project demonstrates WSP’s willingness to cooperate with
different agencies to achieve a desirable outcome.”
Indeed, the relationship the team has built with the hospital
is continuing. WSP is now designing a new emergency
department, pharmacy, inpatient accommodation and an
imaging department, and the work it has already completed is
informing key design decisions on this major extension.
marthinus.noyce@wspgroup.com.au
08 solutions

healthcare focus
New york’s health kICk
WSP’s New York teams have been helping to develop the
citywide facilities of the North Shore Long Island Jewish health
system for many years. At the Long Island Jewish Medical
Centre, WSP Cantor Seinuk provided structural design
for the largest expansion in its history, the Inpatient Tower,
including the Zuckerberg Pavilion and the Katz Women’s
Hospital. Each floor of the $300m, 300,000ft 2 building,
completed in December, is as long as a football field. WSP
Flack + Kurtz has designed the building services for two other
projects under construction – the Zucker Hillside Hospital,
the first new in-patient psychiatric hospital in the tri-state
area for over 50 years, and the Cohen Children’s Hospital.
THE client was delighted
WITH our sOLUTION.
Silvian Marcus, Chairman, WSP Cantor Seinuk
“The Katz Women’s Hospital is an elliptical shape, 10 storeys
high. Our challenge was to design the structure so that four
floors could be added in the future, without disrupting the
activity of the hospital. That’s very unusual, but we managed
it by creating particular spaces throughout the building that
could be converted into construction areas and proportioning
the columns and foundations to take the total weight.
WSP Cantor Seinuk was not initially the structural engineer.
Another firm had carried out the design, but when it came
to the construction bids, the foundations came in $5m overbudget.
One of the fellows on the Board of Trustees called
me and asked if we could come up with a more efficient
solution. I was surprised to see that the entire foundation
design was on caissons, very large concrete piles with a
diameter of about 1m. It’s not a super-tall building, and the
soil is a very good sand, so I said we could use spread footings
instead. The cost came in $6m lower and the client was
delighted. They asked us to re-engineer the entire building.”
lean deSIgn:
how to keep the
blood flowing
“Healthcare is a continuously changing environment, and
hospitals are always competing with each other to offer the
latest technologies. Over the last few years, there has been
a big movement to make hospitals more like hotels, offering
comfort levels and amenities that other hospitals don’t. One
of the challenges for designers is to be able to integrate all of
those technologies in a design that’s conducive to hospitality.
Another big challenge is the management of materials
throughout the hospital. It’s about how equipment,
medication, specimens, food and supplies get in and out and
around – the real bloodstream of the hospital. This is crucial,
because the hospital can’t operate without it, a key factor
leading to satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a design.
YOU get a sPECIAL feeling
ON a healthcare facility.
Murray Bod, Vice President, WSP Flack + Kurtz
“Healthcare projects are very special. There are stringent
codes focused on infection control and the redundancy of
systems and services which are always at the forefront of
our minds, along with creating energy-efficient, sustainable
designs. Then there are requirements that are important to
the people who own and run the facility on how it responds
to patients and their families.
Our client at the Cohen Children’s Hospital
wanted it to be a child-friendly place
that would be comfortable for
parents too. There are video
games and LED displays in
many of the bedrooms, and
additional outlets for parents
to plug in their laptops, so
that everyone feels like
they’re in their own den.
It is our privilege to help
them realise all of these
cool ideas – our systems
have to adapt. You get a
very special feeling when
you’ve been an integral
and important part of a
healthcare facility. When
you walk into a hospital, you
don’t want to see or hear the
air conditioning, you just want to
feel comfortable and everything to be
working properly. If we’ve done our job
right, you won’t even know we’ve been there.”
By JEFFREY P
DRUCkER AIA
Vice President, Array Architects
- Healthcare Facilities Solutions
We’ve been working on what is called “lean design”, thinking
about these things right at the start of the project. Designers,
clinicians, administrators come together with the materials
management team and suppliers. Depending on the size
of the project, we might have two days or two weeks of
intensive meetings to decide how materials will flow through
the building, from the number of loading bays to the layout
of corridors and storage areas.
We also carry out post-occupancy walk-throughs after a
building is complete and we ask the staff what works well
and what could have been better. This is something that our
firm really embraces, because it does so much good for our
healthcare clients and their projects.”
The Cohen Children’s Hospital
solutions 09

FEATURE Bond Street Station
No one travelling through central London over the last couple
of years can have failed to notice that something big is going on,
as the preparations for Crossrail continue apace. Connecting
far-flung destinations east and west of the capital, Crossrail is a
brand-new, 118.5km railway right through the heart of London,
the largest single addition to its transport network for more
than half a century.
bond
ambition
WSP is the lead designer on Bond Street
station, one of the most central and complex
stops. Crossrail is currently Europe’s largest
infrastructure project, and even though Bond
Street is just one of eight new underground
stations, it is a very significant project in its
own right.
The already dramatic changes at street level
are nothing compared to the furious activity
that has been going on under the ground
– and in several very large offices where
the entire project team has been colocated
throughout a mammoth design effort. More
than 150 WSP and sub-consultant staff have
collaborated on the project since 2009,
working side-by-side with the client, fellow
consultants and contractors.
WSP has provided architectural, civil,
structural, geotechnical, fire, building services
design, pedestrian modelling, quantity
surveying, construction planning and
scheduling, town planning, environmental
management, acoustics, traffic management,
utilities diversions, sustainability design
and project management. “As the station
designer, we’re designing everything to do
with the station,” explains technical director
Simon Regan. “The project itself consists of
two large station boxes, connected by 250m
of platform – that’s the equivalent of three
football pitches. The platform tunnels are the
height of two double-decker buses, and each
station box is five storeys high, 30m below
the ground. It’s much bigger than a tube train
– Crossrail is a full-blown overground train
with overhead electrification that happens to
go underground.”
As well as interfaces with the underground
station and the tunnel itself, WSP has been
coordinating plans for the station with
two developments over the ticket halls, by
developers Grosvenor and Great Portland
Estates. The eastern hall emerges in Hanover
Square, the western hall in Davies Street
– both in the heart of Mayfair and among
London’s most prestigious addresses.
“Both sites are heavily constrained so we’ve
had to coordinate many internal technical
interfaces and external stakeholders,” says
Tim Peet, senior technical director at WSP
and lead engineer with overall responsibility
for the design team. “This includes
accommodating frequent design changes to
enhance the overall construction programme,
ongoing planning applications and developing
plans to minimise disruption and noise.”
WSP was appointed to develop the
architectural plans into something detailed
and buildable, and the team’s first job was
to validate the employer’s design. In fact, the
eastern ticket hall has since been designed
three times from first principles – once to
ensure it met the legal requirements of the
Crossrail Act, a second time when Great
Portland Estates decided to create an overall
masterplan for the development above
to better interface with the station, and
a third to accommodate a more efficient
construction programme proposed by the
tunnelling contractor. “Each has been to the
benefit of the project, resulting in a station
that is better integrated into the local area
and more cost-effective to build,” says Regan.
It did, however, put enormous pressure
on the WSP team to complete the designs
without holding up the overall programme.
“We had to accelerate significantly, and our
team worked a lot of sustained overtime
over a six-month period. We have done
everything we could to mitigate the delay
so that everything is ready when the
tunnel boring machines arrive. We agreed
accelerated dates and we’ve met them all.”
10 solutions

Bond Street Station Feature
We’RE all sITTING together
AND we behave as one team, it
DOEsn’t matter who you work
FOR. It’s far more efficient this
WAY and works a lot better
Being colocated with the client and the
entire project team has been of great
benefit, Regan believes. “We’re all sitting
together and we behave as one team – it
doesn’t matter who you work for. It’s far
more efficient this way and works a lot
better. Our design is on the critical path, so
we are working with the contractors and
the client to make the project a success.”
WSP has now been instructed to produce
a 4D model of the eastern ticket hall to
assess the critical construction sequence
between the three contractors.
“When we won the design contract, we
knew it would be hard work so we set
out to build a one-team ethos,” says Peet.
“Large projects are about people working
together in the interests of our client.”
tim.peet@wspgroup.com
simon.regan@wspgroup.com
solutions 11

FEATURE Bond Street Station
BEHIND the sCENEs
Once the
tunnel boring
machine starts
coming from
Paddington,
the clock
is ticking
JAMEs MELVILL
Associate structural
engineer since
September 2009
“I started on the western
ticket hall, but I’ve worked
on the eastern one too. Designing to meet
all of the interfaces was one of the largest
day-to-day challenges, as well as trying to find
a solution that works best for everybody.
Change happens constantly on Crossrail, and
we have to respond to that. It may not be
your part of the job, but a change anywhere
else has an impact on you. That’s the real
crux of this project – everything is connected
because of the tunnel. When the tunnelling
contractor came on board, they proposed
a more efficient method that required a
massive change to the eastern ticket hall.
That meant that last year we were working
under very high pressure. Once the boring
machine starts coming in from Paddington,
the clock is ticking. We’re the next station
on the line, and the machine can’t stop for
too long as it might get stuck in the clay. The
good thing about this project is that while it
has been a lot of work and a lot of pressure,
we understood the value of what was being
delivered. It’s never just because someone
changes their mind.
One of the best things has been the
opportunity to work in a colocated
environment, sitting with the architect,
the clients, and the other framework
design consultants. There are unique
elements of each station, but inside they
all have to look the same. We’ve been
able to sit down with the lead engineers
on other stations and find ways to solve
problems. We’re all working towards the
same goal, and it’s important to build
relationships. We can just get up and chat
here, so it’s a lot more face-to-face.”
underground
ADAM WILsON
Lead CDM coordinator and
engineering safety manager
since November 2010
HEALTH
AND sAFETY
isn’t about
tickING boxes
“I joined the project on a contract basis, but
now I’m working permanently for WSP. One
of the things that really impressed me about
the company was that the management team
recognise that health and safety and CDM is
a core part of what we do. It’s really good to
have that leadership and support from the
top. WSP wants to do the right thing, rather
than just ticking the boxes and walking away;
it is about providing the right design solution.
In the rail industry, safety is of paramount
concern, and Crossrail has a very stringent
project assurance programme to make sure
everything is done correctly, and is evidenced
and supportable.
You can’t really talk about a typical day with
health and safety, as it touches every part of
a project. I might be preparing safety evidence
reports, leading on design coordination,
managing the CDM design risk register, or
getting involved in the technical details. I’m
generally around to provide advice to the
multidisciplinary team. That’s what I like about
the role – you’re not looking at one piece of
a design, you have an overview of the whole
project, and are able to join the bits up to
make the designers’ lives easier.
We work closely with the client to highlight
issues, but also to present solutions. Just
because you hit the requirements or are
“compliant”, it doesn’t mean the station
is safe; often you have to go beyond the
contract requirements to meet your legal
duties, which people generally still don’t
understand. That’s why we spend a lot of
time and effort going through the design
to make sure it’s the right solution. But we
never do it in a confrontational way. It’s
about trying to work with people to
empower them to do the right thing.”
THERE are many
CONsTRAINTs,
BUT it’s about
usING those
TO create
WORLD-CLAss
ARCHITECTURE
GIUsEPPE
MessINA
John McAslan + Partners,
architect since 2009
“We are the lead
architect on Bond Street, working for WSP
as a subconsultant to develop the design in
collaboration with all the other disciplines.
It’s a partnership we’ve enjoyed before.
What’s different about Bond Street
compared to other stations is that
we’ve been commissioned to follow
the design to stage F1, rather than stage
E, so we have more control over how it
progresses once the contractor takes over.
We always felt that design quality should
not be compromised in such a prominent
location, and the client agreed.
As much as 90% of Bond Street is below
ground, which presents many constraints and
limitations. It’s about how you use those to
create world-class, memorable architecture.
The brief specifies the quality we need to
achieve but doesn’t indicate ‘how.’ So we’ve
had a free rein to look at all sorts of solutions,
which can be exhausting… The station must
have a 120-year life span, so we’re striving to
create a timeless, everlasting feel.
We had to find a language to explain our
design philosophy to the wider team, so they
understood why we wanted to make the
structural beams expressive, or the columns
smaller. Conceptual images, often just 3D
hand sketches, helped to show how it would
feel in the space and get the whole team
to focus on one solution. Once that trust is
gained, it’s easier to resolve issues and work
together to meet some tough deadlines.”
12 solutions

BOND Street and beyond
Pedestrian
FLOW analysis
sPECIALIst sERVICEs transport
By PAUL Speirs
Technical director, WSP
At peak times, up to 19,000
passengers an hour will move
through the new Bond Street
Crossrail station, so it’s critical
that we make sure that
movement through the station
is efficient, comfortable and
safe. Pedestrian flow analysis
allows us to do exactly that.
Our specialist pedestrian flow analysis team
has used industry-leading Legion software to
build 4D dynamic models of the new station,
which include every single person, their
interactions and their combined impact on its
operational performance. On Crossrail, there
is stringent guidance on passenger comfort and
crowding. Using dynamic modelling tools, we
tested our design against forecast passenger
demand to demonstrate that density remains
at acceptable levels throughout peak periods.
The software uses complex algorithms to
account for a range of human behaviours, such
as walking speed and crowd interactions. But
the results are readily understandable, even to
a lay person. We can see interactions in real
time from street level down to the platforms
in one holistic model, showing the ebb and
flow of passengers and the build-up and
breakdown of queues and bottlenecks. This
highlights where refinements are required, and
allows us to demonstrate how our solutions
have eased or removed problems.
Crowd density is measured on the Fruin
Level of Service (LoS) scale, and colourbanded
density maps illustrate the conditions
through six grading levels from good to very
poor. Histograms tell us how long the poorer
conditions last and how many individuals are
affected, and space utilisation maps show the
strongest desire lines and the dead space.
With our experience in interpreting these
outputs, we can quickly understand what
decisions need to be made.
Jem Biggins, technical director at WSP and lead
traffic engineer at Bond Street, was
responsible for explaining the model to the
wider team. “There were many emotive and
difficult conflicts, which needed a clear-cut
evidence base,” he says. “The pedestrian flow
analysis team provided me with definitive
answers and powerful graphics, which made
my job a lot easier.” WSP’s models were used
to support key decisions on escalator and
ticket gateline configurations, to assess corridor
and platform widths and measure evacuation
times. We could highlight design concerns and
identify a range of solutions which we then
put to the test. By demonstrating that the final
design met the Crossrail standards, this gave
confidence to the many stakeholders and the
design team. The pedestrian modelling team
worked with the architects, with structural,
vertical transportation and fire and life safety
engineers, and London Underground, to
name but a few.
“Pedestrian flow analysis is an invaluable design
tool,” says Tim Peet, senior technical director
at WSP and lead engineer on Bond Street.
“The two most important things underpinning
a safe and operable station design are the fire
and evacuation strategy, and the Legion
modelling report. The many physical
constraints in Mayfair have presented a
significant challenge, and any slight change has
had a domino effect on the design. Pedestrian
modelling has been a very effective tool for
demonstrating compliance.”
Christine Palmer, principal engineer at WSP
and Bond Street’s lead pedestrian modeller,
had to tackle many interfaces between the
new station and surrounding elements.
“Our job was to future-proof the design, while
ensuring it linked up with the existing London
Underground station. We held workshops
with LU to aid the flow of information and to
brainstorm solutions to potential crowding
issues. The real-time simulations were a great
way to express our work and helped to make
the sessions interactive and successful.”
During the last six years, WSP’s growing
pedestrian flow analysis team has worked
around the world on projects as diverse as
stadiums, shopping centres, skyscrapers,
schools, airports and even restaurants.
We pride ourselves on creating solutions,
influencing design and providing confidence
to help our clients deliver on their aspirations.
paul.speirs@wspgroup.com
solutions 13

indusTRY ssab steelworks
hard Act
TO follow
Industrial experts
from across WSP
Sweden have
successfully delivered
a highly complex
refurbishment for
major sheet metal
producer SSAB
EMEA, enabling
it to make its
toughest steel yet.
Image courtesy of Pär K Olsson
The SEK2.5bn investment at SSAB’s Borlänge facility
was completed at the end of 2011, part of the
company’s quest, as one of Europe’s largest sheet
metal manufacturers, for lighter weight and more
sustainable materials. The “direct quenching, direct
cooling” project enables faster cooling of the hot
steel, creating a harder structure. This new method
of quenching consumes twice as much water – about
15,000m³ per hour – and implementing it involved
four different renovation projects.
WSP’s Borlänge office was an obvious choice for
the design and delivery role because the team has
a great deal of experience on this kind of project.
“One of the reasons that we got the job was our
industrial capability and capacity,” explains project
manager Johan Carlsson. “But this was one of the
largest projects we’ve ever delivered – we had an
average of eight people working on it every week
for almost three years. From this office alone, we
produced between 800 and 900 drawings. Without
the commitment and experience of our colleagues in
Skellefteå, Karlstad and Örebro, we might have found
it difficult to cope with all the challenges on time.”
Those challenges were many and varied, especially as
the steelworks was operational throughout, even as
major elements were completely remodelled. The
hot rolling mill was renovated with a new cooling
section, water purification systems and a tunnel to
transport the water to the quenching line, and new
facilities were added for processing and packing the
steel. During the projects, production ceased only
three times, at carefully planned intervals.
One of the most complex parts was the
refurbishment of an existing building which houses a
reel for making rolls of strip steel, on a site measuring
approximately 40m x 10m. The hole for the shaft is
9.5m below the water table, so foundations had to be
added by casting the piles underwater.
Meeting the demand for increased water supply,
meanwhile, involved constructing a reservoir that
measured 100m x 30m, and several metres high.
Water is delivered to the quenching line at extremely
high pressure from a 30m-high tower after passing
through sand filters to remove impurities, so the
facility had to be able to withstand that strong
downward force.
The project was completed at the end of 2011, on
time and within budget, and SSAB has commended
WSP’s skilled management of the project. With up
to 200 people working on site sometimes 24 hours
a day, the engineers were constantly on-call in case
of any problems. Despite the intensity, Carlsson says
it was a thoroughly enjoyable project to work on.
“There was a lot of new stuff to think about and
try to solve, and our client had a lot of new ideas
and encouraged us to come up with our own ideas
too. We’ve learned a lot – it’s always incredibly
complicated to build a new structure in the middle of
an existing site. When I look at how we managed to
fit the new, higher powered machine measuring 20m
in a small space that used to hold only a reel, and
on new foundations, I can’t believe my eyes.”
johan.carlsson@wspgroup.se
Image courtesy of Pär K Olsson
14 solutions

sPECIALIst sERVICEs infrastructure
WSP SELLS
The secret
life of
bridges
This fast-growing structural diagnostics
service is a mix of highly complex engineering
– and detective work
“We don’t build Brooklyn Bridge
every day,” says Satrajit Das, “but
we do have to maintain it.” Das,
Southeast Structures Manager
at WSP SELLS in Cary, North
Carolina, is explaining the key
role played by its fast-growing
structural diagnostics service.
“Only a handful of companies
can do this. You need specialised
equipment, hardware and
software, and highly trained
personnel.”
Das leads a team of expert
engineers, scientists and
inspectors who specialise in
assessing and repairing bridge
structures, extending their
lives and avoiding inconvenient
and expensive closures. It’s not
surprising then that the service
has proved so popular with
clients. Under contracts worth
$1.2m, WSP SELLS is load testing
bridges and culverts across
North Carolina, and evaluating
the corrosion condition of a
4,000ft post-tensioned segmental
concrete box girder section of
the state’s Albemarle Sound
Bridge. It is also carrying out indepth
investigation on the 2,725ft
Robert F Kennedy suspension
bridge in New York, and may
soon extend the service to New
Jersey too. The WSP SELLS team
have worked on a wide variety of
concrete and steel bridge types,
but Das says that their techniques
can be applied to any structure.
The problem with existing bridges
is that once they are built, it is
often difficult to tell how the
structure is deteriorating and
identify weak points. “Many
bridges experience much
greater truck loads than they
were originally designed for, but
they can’t always be replaced,”
says Das. “We work on some
that are registered with the
National Register of Historic
Places. If a bridge was built in
the 1930s, there often aren’t
many plans available now. Even
without the plans, we can find
out its actual capacity and help
identify potential weak spots, if
any, by analysing what happens
when we drive different types
of truck over it, with different
weights and axle spacings.”
In the absence of evidence, a
blanket weight restriction is often
imposed, potentially disrupting the
local economy. Mitigating this is
only a handful of companies
HAVE the ability to do this.
YOU need sPECIALIsed equipment,
HARDWARE and sOFTWARE, and
HIGHLY trained persONNEL.
one of the service’s greatest selling
points. “The client will identify
bridges that have the greatest
economic impact, out of hundreds
in a state or county, and we will
carry out more refined analysis.”
The team attaches sensors to key
points of the bridge and collect
extensive data, undertaking
advanced finite element analysis
back at the office. “We don’t
have to make any conservative
assumptions, we can find out how
the structure is actually behaving,”
says Das. “Typically we find that
a bridge does not need such a
low weight restriction – we might
have put signs up restricting loads
to 30 tons, but after analysis that
changes to 45 tons.”
Das’ team can also evaluate the
level of corrosion throughout
long-span segmental bridges,
made of concrete with steel
tendons running through rubber
or metal ducts filled with grout.
“Once a bridge is built, there’s
usually no way of knowing what’s
going on in those ducts, or the
corrosion state of the grout and
tendons.” WSP SELLS carries
out non-destructive tests using
ground-penetrating radar and
an ultrasonic device called a
tomographer to locate potential
hot spots for corrosion. Then they
select a small number of sites to
excavate, and subject samples
of grout to a battery of lab tests
to determine the remaining
service life of the bridge. “When
a bridge of this type fails, you
don’t necessarily see any cracks
beforehand, it just collapses.
Clients need to be proactive, so
these tests are invaluable.”
satrajit.das@wspsells.com
Robert F Kennedy bridge, New York. Photo: Nicola Evans, WSP Group
solutions 15

INTERVIEW Andrew Seymour
Postcard from...
Doha
Andrew Seymour is country director, Qatar
for WSP Middle East
What are you working
on at the moment?
Right now, we’ve got a lot of
going on, including a couple of key
projects. We’ve won one of the
main municipality contracts for
roads and drainage in the whole
of the north of the country. Our
client is ASHGHAL, the Public
Works Authority, and it’s a fiveyear
framework worth about
$90m, which we secured working
in a joint venture with a local
company, Khatib & Alami. On top
of that, we’ve also just heard that
we will be developing a masterplan
and the complete detailed design
for a new national coastguard
facility, just north of Doha. It’s a
great project with more than
30 buildings including warehouses,
offices and accommodation, as well
as shooting ranges, football pitches,
a museum, Olympic swimming
pools – all within a completely
self-contained development.
And we also have lots of smaller
projects where we are providing
services such as M&E, structural
engineering, and specialist services
like fire and safety. All in all we
are quite pleased with how things
are moving.
How many people
do you have out there?
Right now, we have eight people
in the country and our growth
will be limited to mainly focus
on having the client-facing team
here and then drawing on the
expertise from around the group
for different projects. Not only
can we tap into the large resource
pool of our colleagues in the
UAE, but I am also determined
to ensure that we will be drawing
on skillsets from the WSP group
worldwide as well, whether the
expertise is in Sweden, India, the
US or Hong Kong.
So it sounds like the
Qatari market is pretty
busy right now?
Absolutely! Qatar is hosting the
2022 FIFA World Cup, so instead
of speculative construction, they
are actually working towards a
major milestone event, which is
fantastic. This means that from
a development point of view the
initial focus will be on infrastructure
for the next few years.
Once the roads, rail network
and other transport systems are
in place, then many other items
will inevitably springboard from
that. For example, the New Doha
International airport has already
been extended, and now there
will also be a major expansion of
the Doha port in order to cope
with the volume of construction
materials that will be required to
be imported.
Other major initiatives that we are
likely to see in the next five to 10
years are the construction of an
extra 85,000 hotel rooms, along
with the associated investment in
the development of public realm,
additional retail and leisure facilities
such as golf courses.
My goal for Qatar will be to use
our global expertise and hopefully
tap into the various different
market sectors. Obviously, if
we have the capacity within the
WSP Middle East group then
we will go for some of the lead
consultant roles, but initially we
are looking to form joint ventures
with other companies and carefully
considering the clients that we
work with.
What’s Qatar like
compared with other
places you’ve worked?
I’m Canadian, but I started my
career in the UK and worked in
London, Scotland and all over
the Midlands. Then I went back
to Canada, and then to the
Caribbean – I was in Barbados
for seven years – and I’ve now
been in the UAE for the last
eight years, so the transition from
tropical hot to arid hot wasn’t too
bad! In terms of how built-up it is,
Qatar is a few years behind the
UAE but it’s well on its way.
Having been a typical expat for
most of my career, the one thing
I find about working in all these
different countries is that it’s all
about people. Whether they’re
Canadian, Caribbean or British,
people are people no matter
where you are in the world.
Everyone likes a good joke, a
good meal, and all of the locals
are proud of the country they
live and work in. Generally, Qatar
is a great place to work, as the
people are very friendly. Before
you get down to business they like
to get to know you over a cup of
tea or coffee – but actually that’s
probably not different to many
other places! One thing to always
remember here is that Qatar
has a very small population, so
you soon find out that everyone
knows everyone else.
What’s a typical
day like for you?
The word I would use is “eclectic”.
It changes from hour to hour. One
minute you could be dealing with
a client, the next resolving technical
issues on a project, and the
next dealing with IT, procedural
or staffing issues, but I can also
guarantee that it is always really
rewarding – every day you feel
like you’ve achieved something!
andrew.seymour@wspgroup.com
solutions March 2012