Coinciding with the company’s 75th-anniversary celebrations, Clancy Construction collected the special Covid-19 Crisis Response Award at the 2022 Irish Construction Industry Awards. Building Ireland speaks to Tom O’Malley, who as contracts manager oversaw the successful delivery of seven critical fast-track design and build projects to the HSE in the Mid-West region during the peak of the pandemic.
When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived on Irish shores in early 2020, the Irish construction industry was presented with unprecedented challenges. Nowhere was this more evident than within the healthcare sector, where contractors were asked to answer the nation’s call by constructing vital emergency facilities with an incredibly fast turnaround and under the most challenging of circumstances.
One long-established, industry-leading company which stood up to be counted in the face of a storm like no other was Clancy Construction, which put a task force together and in partnership with the HSE Mid West developed a truly innovative, standard-setting programme of seven design and build projects in counties Limerick and Tipperary.
This programme of projects, which commenced in April 2020 and was completed in February 2022, played a pivotal role in the country’s fight against Covid and was duly recognised on Wednesday, December 7th last at the 2022 Irish Construction Industry Awards ceremony in The Clayton Hotel, Burlington Road, where Clancy took home the Covid-19 Crisis Response Award.
Clancy’s success on the night came much to the obvious delight of associate director Tom O’Malley, who was instrumental in delivering the award-winning projects at Croom Hospital, University Hospital Limerick, Nenagh Hospital and Thurles Hospital but is quick to share the credit with the entire construction delivery team and design and build consultants, whose expertise and energy made the extraordinary delivery of these projects possible:
“Delivering these projects and winning this award would not have been possible without the invaluable input of the entire team, especially the design consultants [Reddy Architecture and Urbanisation, Horgan Lynch Consulting Engineers, Don O Malley Partnership, Fortress Planning, GSP Fire Consultants and MJP Fire Consultants], who put in unbelievable work to get this programme over the line – even more so than the men on site.”
A 24-bed unit was rapidly delivered at University Hospital Limerick within 14 weeks (April – July 2020) in conjunction with another 24-bed unit at Croom Hospital within 17 weeks (April – September 2020) as well as a new multi-functional 558m2 outpatient department with the primary function of serving the ophthalmology department at the hospital complex at UHL’s Nenagh Campus plus a 750m2 single-storey Integrated Care Programme for Older Persons (ICPOP) unit stand-alone extension at Thurles Hospital, allowing the HSE team to continue to care for the elderly in the community, providing resilience to their existing services.
Supplementary works at Croom Hospital comprised four new operating theatres, a theatre reception unit, a recovery unit, an HSSD unit including an energy centre, plant room fit-out and MV upgrade; a new 13-bed day ward facility (St Anne’s Day Ward); and the demolition of derelict buildings and provision of car parking facilities.
“We had already completed a lot of work with the HSE in Munster and when Covid started we got a call asking what options we could put on the table to build something very quickly,” Tom recalls. “At the time, we were doing research into student accommodation using light gauge steel and we were able to put that into practice. The wall panels and roof panels were built by Horizon Offsite. When you are using this very accurate form of offsite construction, you can order windows and other accessories parallel to the manufacturing phase as the panels are millimetre accurate and you know they are going to fit.”
Headquartered just outside Thurles, County Tipperary and now with significant operations in the capital, Clancy Construction has a reputation for delivering excellent projects within the restoration, retail, medical, food and residential sectors nationwide. Founded by John Clancy in 1947, Clancy is an indigenous Irish company built upon three generations of continual development.
Safety is Clancy Construction’s number one priority. Through their safety department, Clancy Construction conducts both in-house training and external training to ensure all direct staff has the required training in keeping with their statutory obligations under health and safety legislation. Clancy Construction is SafeT certified with a Grade A for the seventh consecutive year, which only 10% of contractors in Ireland have obtained.
Clancy’s record of delivering quality healthcare projects, their commitment to collaborative working and their experience of fast-track and offsite fabrication made them the contractor of choice for the HSE when they needed reliable building solutions to help increase capacity to deal with the unprecedented challenges of the 2020-2022 Covid-19 pandemic emergency.
Realising these fast-track Covid-19 emergency projects for the HSE in the Mid West was a monumental effort by all parties associated with their delivery. From the outset, a team was selected with the single objective of ensuring professional completion of the projects within agreed timeframes.
Clancy Construction, the HSE Mid West and their partners, had one objective when they sat down via Zoom in March 2020. That objective was to be available at any stage to review and approve key submittals, schedules and design proposals to deliver these key national projects.
During the previous two years, Clancy Construction had a team working on the negotiation of the aforementioned student accommodation scheme on Bandon Road in Cork. That process led to the development of a proposal for a contractor-designed structure consisting of raft foundations with light gauge steel-framed system (LGS) walls, cast in-situ floors on metal decking, precast concrete stairs, prefabricated bathroom pods with the external envelope of windows, cladding and single-ply roofing all installed in the traditional manner on site.
The Bandon Road project sought to capitalise on the programme, cost and programme efficiencies of offsite production. Armed with this knowledge, Clancy was confident that the new permanent hospital facilities could be delivered using a similar type of structure and system to that developed for the contractor-designed student accommodation scheme.
The projects were delivered using off-site construction and MMC where possible. This required the windows, bathroom pods, air-handling units, doors and other key packages to be manufactured to the base design dimensions without site surveys in the knowledge that the LGS system would deliver more accurate as-built results than traditional methods. The use of BIM throughout the design and build process also allowed the team to trust that key interfaces between building elements were coordinated.
Given the ever-changing global market throughout this stage of the pandemic every day, multiple challenges arose in both the design and procurement processes. The team negotiation regular daily calls to review these challenges and develop a compliant solution to each.
Some of these responses included designing appropriately sized openings within the structural elements (walls and roofs) to allow for the late delivery of key items of equipment such as air-handling units and clinical equipment including autoclaves and ultrasonic washroom equipment. On every step of the journey, Clancy provided end solutions and service levels that went above and beyond the call of duty and were appropriate in a time of national emergency. Thus, they were indeed worthy winners of the Covid-19 Crisis Response Award at the 2022 Irish Construction Industry Awards.
“Clancy had the knowledge and the expertise both in-house and within our specialist designers and supply chain. Clancy enjoys very strong relationships with our consultants and we collaborated to agree on buildable design details that enabled a very fast turnaround time on site.
“This ICI Covid-19 Crisis Response Award is due recognition for the whole team that pulled together in challenging times to deliver exceptional results. Everybody went over and above the demands of their normal 9-5 job to deliver against all odds – especially during the first few weeks of the pandemic when there was no clarity and nobody knew what exactly we were going into and how long it would last. Our design teams were working up to 18 hours a day. Everybody was determined to succeed – and they did succeed.
“Because the nation was at a virtual standstill at the beginning, we could pick and choose our construction team,” Tom concludes. “We looked at people who had the necessary resources and who had a proven track record of delivering for us in the past. We faced challenges that we never thought we’d be facing and had to adapt and think on our feet. We couldn’t flood the site with workers so we had to find the perfect balance between having enough people on site whilst keeping them safe from contracting Covid.”
The pressure to deliver the much-needed increased HSE capacity was on big time and Clancy Construction can indeed be extremely proud of what they achieved during this defining period in the company’s, and the nation’s, history.
Clancy Construction,
Ballylusky,
Drangan,
Thurles,
County Tipperary.
Tel: 052 91 52166
Email: [email protected]
Web: clancy.ie
This article was published in Building Ireland Magazine, April 2023, Vol 9 No 4
