St Bartholomew’s Hospital

Even before the pandemic, maintaining air quality in a hospital was essential for the wellbeing of its patients, visitors, and staff. Even more essential than that of the general hospital, are the departments like pathology, theatres, virology, and rare diseases, that all have the potential of distributing airborne viruses. To address the NHS’s concerns relating to air quality, all new installations have to meet or exceed the NHS standard HTM-03.01 for Compliant Hospital Air Handling Units (AHUs) with regards to performance and construction.

During the early part of 2022, AirCraft Air Handling was approached by M&E Services Contractor to design and supply a bespoke heat recovery reverse cycle direct expansion (DX) AHU for St Bartholomew’s Hospital’s Pathology Lab. St Bartholomew’s is Britain’s oldest hospital, best known simply as Barts, it is one of five large hospitals run by Barts Health NHS Trust.

The very large, bespoke AHU was designed and manufactured to stand the rigours of an external roof top (four-story high) environment. The specification included a Trend Control Systems smart controller to allow for connectivity to the Hospitals’ Building Management System (BMS).

After final quality testing at our premises in Stafford, we shipped the AHU directly to site for installation by our client. The delivery follows on from a previous HTM-03.01 for Compliant Hospital Air Handling Unit supplied to St Thomas’ Hospital in London SE1, to provide filtered and conditioned air for the hospital’s Rare Diseases Centre.