Friends of the Elderly is a registered UK charity that provides a range of services to enhance older people's quality of life. Having already completed several building projects for the charity, Beard successfully negotiated the contract to build the Bernard Sunley Home at Woking, Surrey.
The Bernard Sunley Home is built from traditional brick and block around two landscaped courtyards accessible from ground floor rooms.
The building provides 25 rooms for elderly people needing nursing care, and 35 rooms for those who suffer from dementia. There is also a specialist nursing unit for the care of Alzheimers patients. The residents share several communal dining rooms and sitting rooms. The building also accommodates administration and nursing support facilities, and ancillary services such as a hairdressing salon. The top floor provides numerous self-contained flats for live-in staff.
Challenges and solutions
The project entailed extensive mechanical and electrical work, including the installation of lifts, heavy duty laundry equipment, alarms and code-protected doorways.
The building footprint extended to within a few metres of the perimeter of the building site, which meant that materials and resources had to be efficiently managed to ensure that production was not affected. A tower crane was used to lift materials and equipment into the site.
Tests revealed that the ground at the site did not meet the requirements of the storm water soak away system specified in the original design. Beard therefore had to install a pumping chamber and underground drainage beneath the nearby busy main road. This required careful planning and traffic management so that the works could be completed safely and as quickly as possible.
