Harefield Hospital double their storage capacity of Clinical Records with Mobile Shelving

Harefield Hospital, part of Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust, stored its clinical records in a converted building within the hospital grounds on old static shelving.

Static shelving requires an aisle to access every run of shelving and hence much of the valuable space is taken up by access aisles.

The Trust wanted to store more of Harefield’s clinical records within this building, along with some records from Royal Brompton Hospital, releasing valuable space for other clinical use.

Total Storage Systems, based in Shropshire, were invited to tender for the contract to replace this old shelving with mobile shelving (shelving which is mounted on mobile bases which move to provide an aisle and access to the shelving)

A tender which they subsequently won by designing an extremely space and operationally efficient layout at a very competitive price.

The first stage of the contract was to remove the old shelving, revealing a large number of building columns which would influence the layout design of the shelving.

Clinical Records with Mobile Shelving

The static runs of shelving were built around the building columns as shown below, allowing the mobile runs of shelving to move between the columns.

 

Clinical Records with Mobile Shelving

This is demonstrated by the layout drawing shown below.

The section being built in the picture above is the small red section to the left.

The static runs of shelving are shaded. All other runs of shelving can move left or right to provide the aisle and access to the shelving.

Clinical Records with Mobile Shelving

The shelving layout shown, built in two phases provides over 2.4 kilometres of shelf space which approximately doubles the amount of shelving previously available and number of clinical records that can be stored.

Clinical Records with Mobile Shelving

The picture above shows the main aisle between phases 1 and 2 with the banks of mobile shelving to the left (shown in blue) and static shelving between the building columns to the right.

The picture below is taken from the main aisle looking left from the words “Phase 1” on the plan. The shelving is shown in Red on the plan.


Helen Foster, Clinical Records Manager for Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust has commented:

Tim Holiday, from Total Storage Systems, has expertly managed our project throughout the past six months.  He worked with us to provide the best storage options despite several changes we required during the initial planning phases. The team of installers were extremely competent and adapted their daily schedules when required to ensure we were able to decorate the department, install new lighting and deliver a clinical records service alongside the installation of the two phases.”

For more information on Mobile Shelving or other storage solutions contact

Tim Holiday, Total Storage Systems Limited on 08448 734730

Or look at our Websites:

www.totalmobileshelving.co.uk for mobile shelving and

www.totalstoragesystems.co.uk for other storage solutions.