Future Proofing Cancer Care in South Wales

Cancer care and treatment is rapidly advancing. New technologies, medicines and treatment regimens are being developed all the time. This means that specialist cancer care facilities need to be able to adapt and respond to these developments, ensuring that they can continue providing the latest and most advanced treatments to patients, long into a building’s lifespan.

The new Veilndre Cancer Centre (nVCC) will include nine Linear Accelerator bunkers, designed to accommodate not only the “day one” technology, but future technologies including three MR LINACs and higher energies. The client, design team and contractor, are working closely together to ensure required flexible capacity is met. There is inherent flexibility to the planning of the department through building the bunkers at ground level, with wide spans, access to the exterior for servicing (as well as daylight) and providing areas of soft space adjacent to and above the treatment rooms.

Features of the design to ensure flexibility include:
– areas of increased shielding than strictly required for day one.
– knock out panels to allow for installation of MR LINAC magnet and static ring.
– services routed and planned for day one and future scenarios – focussing on planned transformation rather than demolition and disruption.
– individual AHUs per bunker to prevent a single point of failure, minimising interruptions, or delays to treatment.
All the while, maximising daylight with pleasant waiting spaces on the façade and roof lights at maze entrances, and use of natural materials throughout.

The nVCC is being designed to serve current patient throughput as well as projected requirements and to be able to expand services and modalities in the future without replanning, additional shielding or rerouting services that would cause extensive disruption to on-going treatment provision. Additionally, the three bunkers earmarked for MR LINACs are located such that most of the department and patient areas would not need to be shut down or treatment paused during the installation. Designing for future flexibility is possible, but the required flexibility needs to be defined and considered holistically for the most efficient result.