Optimum opportunity for recovery is being delivered for patients requiring acute care for mental illness- down to the ventilation.
Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has opened two new facilities in Derby and Chesterfield. The Derwent and Carsington Units represent a £150m investment under the Trust’s Making Room for Dignity programme to revamp its mental health inpatient offering. Each single sex unit provides 54no. single rooms and associated resources including a therapy suite, arts room and library resource room.
Delivered by Integrated Health Projects, the units feature HVAC services by Dalkia UK. To address the supply, extract and transfer of fresh air throughout the units, Dalkia specified Gilberts’ security grilles and dampers.
The stainless steel grilles feature 3mm dia perforations to the fascia and a staggered pitch. This balances optimal airflow whilst addressing the specific requirements of their environment. The design avoids risk of self-harm and minimises draughts and noise.
Explained David Richards, Dalkia Project Engineer:
“Fresh air and good indoor air quality enhances health & wellbeing. In psychiatric settings, ventilation needs to be safe to avoid risk of self-harm. The ventilation should avoid creating an environment that exacerbate agitation or anxiety. It needs to help create a neutral odour and non-reverberatory space. It needs to maintain the required standard of infection control.
“Gilberts’ security grilles are designed to function quietly and effectively whilst minimising the potential for occupants to use them to self-harm. They were therefore an obvious choice. We also knew that we could rely on Gilberts to deliver any technical support throughout the project delivery process- more than two years in this case.”
Founded 60 years ago, and still family-owned, Gilberts is the UK’s leading independent air movement engineer. It is unique in its ability to design, manufacture and test all products- including bespoke fabrications- in-house, to the extent it even designs and manufactures its own tools at its 140,000 sq ft head office and production facility.
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