Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust – Compartmentation Survey

Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust provides a wide range of clinical care at Salisbury District Hospital, which includes general acute and emergency services to approximately 225,000 people across Wiltshire, Dorset, and Hampshire.

Project Overview

Salisbury appointed Pennington Choices to undertake full fire compartmentation/fire-stopping surveys to identify all potential risks and breaches across Salisbury District Hospital’s three regions over the course of three months.

Salisbury wanted to understand the fire compartmentation risk profile in each area of their hospital. By understanding the risk on an area-by-area basis, Salisbury can use identified breaches and defects in walls, floors, and ceilings to prioritise and cost plan for future remedial work.

Our Approach

To ensure that our proposed delivery approach, processes, and procedures met Salisbury’s expectations, our team conducted a pilot survey, initial familiarisation visit, and subsequent mobilisation meeting with Salisbury’s project management team. This ensured clear communication was maintained from project initiation and gave us site-specific information for working with Salisbury and within the hospital.

Due to the dynamic nature of the hospital's live and clinical environment, we tailored our approaches to establish a flexible programme, prioritising surveying high-risk areas first. We created a phased delivery plan, systematically addressing priority zones determined by factors such as overall risk, location, fire risk profile, accessibility, maintenance considerations, and proximity. This approach aimed to minimise disruption to patients and staff, providing a clear and manageable phasing plan.

We provided Salisbury with a rolling two-week plan with seven-day advanced notices for surveys in the relevant areas of the hospital. We also provided daily surveying debriefs and weekly and monthly reports.

We carried out a full compartmentation survey for the hospital, which included an assessment of wall seals and soffit interface; inspection of existing fire seals applied to service penetrations; detail of any remedial works required, including priority, size, and location; and indicative costs of remedial works.

Our Achievements

The communication strategy we developed with the project management team and key hospital stakeholders ensured we could plan and deliver work with minimal disruption. All updates to compartment lines were carried out in coordination with fire engineers and in alignment with the current fire strategy, relevant codes of practice, and regulations.

Survey data was collected using our survey and inspection software, Bolster, allowing any compartment breaches to be digitally logged with photos and comments from the surveying stage. Using Bolster allowed for faster data collection, automatically generated reports, and provided Salisbury with real-time access to survey works and remedial recommendations.

We developed a great working relationship with Salisbury by designating an on-site project manager and contract manager who maintained communication with them throughout. As well as communicating with Salisbury’s project manager, we were in contact with the hospital’s clinical services for infection control to ensure safe and smooth access to all areas.