Nightingale House Hospice Refurbishment

Nightingale House Hospice provides specialist palliative care services to patients and their families across much of North East Wales completely free of charge. They reach from Wrexham, Flintshire and East Denbighshire to Barmouth and the towns on the Welsh border, including Oswestry and Whitchurch.

There’s a 12 bed inpatient ward, a 15 patient daycare unit, outpatient clinic and a whole host of additional specialist services including occupational therapy, physiotherapy, an ambulance service and bereavement support services, including specialist services for children and young adults.

No-one wants to need a hospice for their care, we’d all rather be fit and healthy, but when they are needed, their services are exceptional. Nightingale House is taking this to a whole new level with a major refurbishment to allow their entire space to feel more comfortable and homely and most importantly to care for even more patients within their catchment area.

We have been working with our partners, Read Construction who have been awarded the contract. Our role in the overall project is to upgrade the heating, domestic water services and ventilation throughout as well as fitting new sanitary ware and upgrading the air conditioning in the common areas.

For Scott Bennett, Senior Contracts Engineer at Kimpton, it’s a job he knows well.

“Years ago, back in 1995 when I was a young engineer, I worked on this project installing the very HVAC plant we are now upgrading. The team here do an absolutely amazing job here and it’s lovely to be back and see that continuing all these years later.”

The project itself has been phased to cause almost zero disruption to the services the hospice provides. Phase one sees the total upgrade of one wing of the building, with new rooms and facilities throughout as part of the hospices day services. When this is completed, the in-patients will be transferred across into their new home and work will begin on phase two.

The plans for the upgrades in phase one include upgrades for the reception area. In addition, the current conservatory space will be converted into a new open area to be named Noddfa – It’s a Welsh word meaning refuge, a place of welcome and peace.

There will also be a spiritual garden room, and the new Grove Road entrance to the ward. The upgrades include more accessible toilets and showers as well as introducing more energy-efficient systems throughout.

Speaking about the project and what it means for us at Kimpton, Scott sums it up well.

“Working at Nightingale is much more than just an HVAC job for us. It’s one that has really got under the skin of the whole team. It’s such a calm and peaceful place and looking at the work the team do, it’s just incredible how they work so closely with the patients and their extended families, many of whom can be struggling to come to terms with their condition.

The whole place costs over £3m per year to operate and only 20% of their funding comes from public sources, the rest has to be raised by their team of fundraisers and volunteers. Any savings in ongoing running costs, will have a direct and positive impact and allow them to deliver the same level of care with lower overheads.

We have been so moved by the work, that we have volunteered to be part of the Christmas Tree Collection Service on Saturday, 11 January 2020. We’re giving up some of our time to go out into the local community and remove their old Christmas trees, in exchange for a donation to Nightingale House Hospice. So, if you’d like yours taken away, you can sign up here.

The work in the upgrade and refurbishment is ongoing and when we have more pictures, we’ll share them on here.