Concrete Coring, Cutting and Scanning, Campbelltown Hospital

The job

Taylor Construction Group has been the head contractor on works at Campbelltown Hospital, on Therry Road in Campbelltown. The job has covered plant and utility areas, services corridors and a valve station on the grounds, with new openings, cores and patching needed as each area came ready.

Perfect Concrete Care has been Taylor's scanning, coring and cutting crew on the hospital since January 2023, coming back to site as new work areas opened up. This page covers the work up to February 2024. All of it was in plant rooms, utility areas and services corridors, never in a clinical or patient space.

What we did

• Concrete scanning ahead of every core and cut, checking for post tensioned cables, reinforcement, power cables and services, with a written report where the client needed one
• Core drilling for services through walls and slabs, from small fixing holes to large diameter cores over a metre deep
• Stitch coring rows of overlapping cores to form openings where a saw could not reach
• Concrete cutting and jackhammering, including breaking out concrete around an outdoor valve station
• Patching cut slots and openings once the services or fixings were in
• Hourly works and call outs for smaller jobs as they came up across the site

What made it hard

A hospital does not stop for construction. Every work area had to be fenced, signed and kept separate from the rest of the site, and from the areas still in use around it. Some visits were straightforward hourly work; others needed a full scan and a written report before a single hole went in.

The concrete on site was not consistent. Some slabs were post tensioned, so every core had to be scanned and marked first. On at least one visit the crew could not proceed because the floor topping had to come off before the job was ready, and on another the job waited on rain. Working around other trades in the same corridors and plant rooms meant fitting in with whatever else was happening that day.

How it was done

Every area was scanned before anything was marked. Where the client was looking for post tensioned cables, reinforcement, power cables or slab thickness, the scan was done first and a report issued where one was needed. Core and cut positions were only marked once the scan was clear.

Cores went in wet, checked against the size and depth needed, and stitch cored where an opening was too big for a single core. Cuts and jackhammer work followed the same rule: scan, mark, then cut. Once the services or fixings were through, the openings and slots were patched back with mortar, and the area was left clean for the next trade.

Lessons learned on this job

Every job teaches the crew something. These are the ones we took from Campbelltown Hospital, and we use them on every job in an occupied facility.

What worked

• Scan first, every time. Checking for post tensioned cables and services before marking a single hole kept every core clear of what mattered
• Fence and sign each area. Keeping the work area separate from the rest of a live site meant the rest of the hospital carried on undisturbed
• Report where it is asked for. Written scan reports for the client meant there was a record of what was found before we cut
• Patch as you go. Filling cut slots and openings once the services were in left each area ready for the next trade straight away

What was difficult

• Concrete that was not consistent. Post tensioned slabs in some areas meant nothing could be assumed from one part of the site to the next
• Areas not always ready. More than one visit had to stop or wait because the floor or the area was not prepared for us yet
• Working around other trades. Plant rooms and services corridors are shared spaces, so the crew had to fit around whoever else was in there
• A live facility. Every work area needed its own fencing and signage, since there was no shutting the hospital down around us

If you have something similar

Head contractors on hospital and healthcare sites need a scanning and coring crew who can work cleanly in an occupied facility. Have a look at our concrete scanning Sydney, concrete core drilling Sydney and concrete cutting Sydney pages, or get in touch.