1The Waikato Hospital provides crucial services to a large geographical area in New Zealand’s North Island. It’s a large facility, with a number of buildings in a cluster, based in Hamilton city. Holmes Consulting Group is the structural and civil engineer for the Waikato District Health Board Services and Campus Redevelopment project – a $250M project including the major redevelopment Waikato Hospital, as well as the Thames Hospital.

2The redevelopment projected needed to improve the functionality and resilience of the facilities, ultimately helping the District Health Board deliver better services to the large community it serves. Part of our remit was to build flexibility into our designs, so the hospitals are adaptable for evolving needs and demands. To add to that, we needed to design with continuity in mind – these facilities are extremely busy, and downtime would be a significant problem for both patients and staff.