Manningham Medical Centre wanted to see how they could fill a gap in the market with their skin clinic offer. They needed to increase both their revenue & their profitability to assist with their return on investment, as they have a high rental cost to account for.
The big problem
To run as a skin clinic, it needed a secondary entrance. That brought up further challenges in complying with disability access & fire escape codes, & ensuring security. The next issue we had to work around was the limited opportunities to run services (plumbing & electrical) for the operating tables, waste water & body protected electrical circuitry. In addition to this, the landlord has very strict conditions on the type of medical offer that can be performed on the level their tenancy was on, because all specialist clinics had to be on the level above, where they attract higher rent.
How we solved it
In order to resolve the access stumbling block, we identified a secondary exit to the tenancy that we made look like a stand-alone medical clinic. The next difficulty, achieving compliance with the Building Code of Australia (BCA) regarding fire escape, was easily rectified by changing the way the doors were swinging, and revising all the fire escape paths of travel for exit. The third complication involving the limited services was sorted by utilizing pump packs to discharge waste. We were able to run pumping lines to discharge the sewer in the absence of being able to core drill into the next tenancy because there was critical infrastructure below. The electricity needed to be brought up to the current standard of body protected circuits. However, it had to be taken across about 150 meters to reach a new supply, so that we could install electrical compliant with the BCA. The last component of the solution involved complicated staged delivery, so that we didn’t disrupt the main clinic from performing their best care for their clients. The client is thrilled to say they are happily operating in the space. They were able to get a greater return on investment, to maximize existing resources that are able to be moved between clinic, and best of all they can provide a high level of assistance to their clinics who are needing skin care.
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