Willmott Dixon delivers work in live environments in most sectors, and particularly healthcare, education, offices, and housing. We frequently work on constrained sites in busy locations.

Communication is key to working in live environments. On all our projects, we have meetings with the client and project stakeholders on a daily and weekly basis to provide information about construction activities and address any of their concerns.

Working in live environments in healthcare

The majority of our healthcare experience involves refurbishment or upgrade work of acute, mental health and community care facilities, which means we are well accustomed to working in live environments around healthcare professionals, service users and patients.

Over the last decade, we have completed more than 50 projects in live healthcare environments.

We take care to understand the operational requirements of all healthcare buildings we work in, through regular stakeholder liaison meetings before, during and after the construction programme.

We have established processes, procedures and management systems tailored towards a proactive ‘zero accidents’ approach and minimising disruption to operational services.

Stakeholder engagement, handover and aftercare

Our construction teams engage with a client at the start of a project, and we establish 'soft landings' protocols to ensure all our staff and members of our supply chain achieve ‘buy in’ to these processes.

In sectors such as healthcare, we establish a training plan in conjunction with the client and involve them during construction, with regular site tours. Where necessary, we provide training in the use of new equipment at least 10 weeks prior to project completion. After a handover workshop, we begin a series of familiarisation visits for all building users and appoint an aftercare manager for the two-year period post completion.