Orthopaedic day surgery, delivered end to end

The brief

An established orthopaedic group needed a purpose-fitted day surgery: two operating theatres, a sterilisation suite, a recovery bay and imaging capability — delivered as a working clinical environment on a fixed program, because the group's theatre lists and patient bookings were built around the completion date. We underwrote and acquired the property, then ran the building works and the clinical equipment program as a single integrated project rather than two parallel contracts.

The difficulty

Three constraints applied. The building was a legacy commercial structure: floor loading, ceiling heights and services routes all needed remediation before any clinical configuration could be locked in. The equipment — arthroscopy towers, imaging units and the sterilisation plant — carried lead times of several months, and a late order would have delayed the operator's first theatre lists. The licensing pathway for a day-procedure facility required commissioning evidence, not just completion certificates, before the doors opened.

What we did

We programmed the project around its longest-lead items rather than its shortest. Equipment was specified and ordered in parallel with the early building works — so the towers, imaging and sterilisation plant arrived against a building that had been reworked to receive them, rather than into a finished room that discovered it had the wrong services. Structural and services remediation was completed and verified before clinical fit-out began. Commissioning — installation, calibration, acceptance testing and operator training — was scheduled as a workstream in its own right, and the licensing evidence pack was assembled progressively throughout the program instead of being compiled at the end.

We coordinated the builders, equipment vendors, licensing consultants and the operator's clinical team.

The outcome

The facility was licensed and handed over on program, with the equipment commissioned and the operator's team trained before the first patient day. The asset — building and equipment together — entered our portfolio as one managed unit, with a single service framework and one maintenance calendar. The operator's first quarter of theatre lists ran without an equipment-related cancellation; the property and the equipment have been managed under our operations program ever since.

From the other side of the program

This project applies our investment model under one owner. Read the next project, a medical centre repositioning, or talk to us about a similar opportunity.