Building for Mental Health Facilities - Thought Leadership from Kingspan Timber Solutions

Thought Leadership – Ian Loughnane

When it comes to specifying materials for the construction of mental health facilities, there are many factors that must be taken into consideration. The design of the building is critical to the wellbeing of the patients and the overall efficiency of the care delivered to service users. With the right design and building materials, service providers are able to offer a comfortable and therapeutic environment that can greatly benefit potentially distressed and vulnerable patients. Careful consideration must be taken when selecting building materials, to ensure they are suitably robust and appropriate for the operation of the facility. Although wear and tear is expected in all buildings – some mental health units require enhanced mechanical robustness in certain areas. The maintenance of a high quality, well maintained and functionally efficient building is a fundamental part of the service delivery. Architects have long understood the impact of space on people.

Timber is uniquely placed to deliver these requirements. Lining walls with plywood or OSB provides a continuous support to hardwall finishes resulting in a very robust wall whilst allowing easy servicing within the structure. It is also possible to combine the pleasing visual characteristics of timber with enormous structural strength and robustness of CLT.

Visually exposed glulam frames offer the opportunity to create a light, warm and pleasing open environment, within facilities that support a sense of wellbeing. Timber structures and applications offer more than just functional space, but can also facilitate the design of a welcoming, peaceful and homely atmosphere.

As well as offering aesthetically pleasing and calming elements, offsite manufactured timber systems also provide rapid construction times with increased levels of accuracy throughout the build process. This comes as a huge advantage when constructing healthcare buildings where budgets and timescales are frequently challenging.
There is a direct correlation between the quality of an environment and human health and wellbeing. The best practice guidance, set out in BREEAM Healthcare and the Good Corporate Citizen Model (NHS), recognises this and is an essential part of the planning process. A holistic design should also include measures to minimise on waste during construction and low energy costs in use and re-use/recycling potential at end of life. Timber is the number one sustainable and renewable building material, offering enhanced energy efficiency beyond the construction process and throughout to the whole life cycle of the building. Timber systems are designed to maximise thermal performance and minimise air leakage, resulting in well-insulated, higher-performance buildings that don’t require expensive bolt on technologies to enhance the environmental performance and will ultimately reduce running costs. This is of huge benefit to organisations such as the NHS with significant built assets to maintain, which require a considerable amount of power to run. The continuing savings made from increased energy efficiency can have a huge impact.

Overall timber offers a robust, energy efficient sustainable structures with real aesthetic merit – ideal for a wide range of healthcare facilities. Kingspan Timber solutions have recently been involved with the construction of a class leading mental health facility in Leigh. The 5 Boroughs Partnership – an organisation that provides specialist mental health and learning disability services and associated support for carers around Wigan – is the end Client for this new £40million mental health facility, designed to accommodate up to 48 inpatients as well as a full outpatient service.

Kingspan Timber Solutions were selected to provide their Kingspan TEK® and Kingspan TEK® Cladding for the project. Kingspan TEK® was used as part of a hybrid structural frame solution for the first phase of the project. This cladding panel solution is an innovative Structural Insulated Panel System (SIPs) – capable of cladding any structure, not just steel but also timber and concrete. The panels were manufactured to suit the individual project needs creating a thermally efficient envelope including a very large open plan roof space for complex services within a warm roof.