The Queen Elizabeth Hospital

Lucid has been engaged for a number of projects within The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in South Australia.

These include:

• Infrastructure reliability and capacity audits.
• New short stay mental health unit.
• Feasibility of day surgery admissions and recovery and pain management clinic.
• Stage 3 multi-storey car park.
• New steriliser.
• Kitchen upgrade.

Lucid’s initial engagement at the hospital was to provide electrical and hydraulic consultancy to investigate areas of possible failure to the Ward Tower Block building and site wide infrastructure. These works involved detailed site investigation, liaison with maintenance staff, proposal of design options and detailed feasibility reporting directly to SA Health. 

Specific items that were addressed were:

• Appraisal of current maintenance practices undertaken across the site and provision of a detailed condition report for key items of plant.
• Improvements to the automated control systems associated with the standby diesel generators and load shedding of non-essential loads.
• Investigation of possible sources of essential and non-essential power to the Radiology Department.
• Combining the two existing site standby diesel generators to form an essential electrical services ‘ring main’.
• Assessment of the condition of the hydraulic services within the Tower Block and provision of measures to increase reliability for failing pipework installed above intensive care and emergency wards.

The works were requested by SA Health to ensure that, following the recent equipment failures, a strategy was in place to mitigate any future loss of service to the hospital.

Lucid undertook extensive investigative works and provided detailed assessment of the risks and opportunities to replace potential faulty equipment. By investigating the source of essential power consumption within the site, Lucid was able to establish that items of non-critical plant were connected to the essential power. By proposing a process to transfer loads within the site rather than upgrade existing essential switchboards and generators, Lucid was able to provide an increase in electrical capacity without upgrading major items of electrical infrastructure.

From this initial engagement, Lucid gained a sound understanding of the critical electrical and hydraulic infrastructure across the site to fully understand the limitations and opportunities that exist within the various systems. During the investigation process the Lucid team forged strong relationships with key members of the maintenance staff which has been an asset for future projects.