St Mary’s Hospital, London

The customer for this project was Vista Maintenance who were the nominated contractor for the refurbishment of St Marys’ Hospital. They were tasked with refurbishing an old ward and to bring it into the 21^st Century. This involved installing a new automatic opening access door and the removal of existing block paved ramp.

We were asked to provide new ramped access, while maintaining access to a small fit for work testing unit. We also needed to provide ramped access directly to Praed Street as a means of emergency exit.

The hospital was working on very strict deadlines, as they needed the new ward ready to take in new patients, given the need for bed spaces at the NHS. There were some groundworks needed prior to the ramp install, such as removal of the existing ramp and the removal of soil and kerbs.

We were able to ascertain that this was needed, during our survey. This was carried out in early April 2023. Once the groundworks were complete, we were able to install the ramp over a 2 day period in the first week of May.

• Balustrade Handrails – this is required within nondomestic settings at heights of over 380mm
• Multi directional ramp – the ramp was needed for access to two areas of the hospital.
• 1 : 15 gradient as per client request, in one area however, our ramp was 1 : 10 due to the space available (this remains compliant)
• Continuous handrails – we used our standard connectors which allow continuous handrails meaning we could ensure compliance.
• Highlighted edges – we also included 55mm yellow highlighted edges to all step nosing’s and any levels changes to the ramps – we offer this on all non-domestic ramps to aid any potential users who may have visual impairments.
• Angle sections – these were needed to turn around the building and allow us to position the ramp towards a specific area that the hospital needed access to. It also allowed the existing testing building to still be accessible.