The 595,000m2 facility will provide a full range of clinical services, tertiary care, and wellness programmes within a consolidated paediatric care model. As a national and regional centre of excellence, it will also have state-of-the-art facilities for specialised medical research and teaching.

Situated on the coastline, within the Al Sabah Speciality Medical Area in Al Shuwaikh, the hospital’s distinctive design concept is based on crystalline forms. The main entrance is via a five-storey high, 457m-long, climate-controlled atrium. This area will combine a blend of civic, hospitality and retail services, including play areas with a ‘sea adventure’ theme.

From the outset, our client, the Kuwait Ministry of Health and Ministry of Public Works, envisaged KCH as a highly resilient and sustainable building. We have worked closely with architects HKS and SSH towards that goal, combining the expertise of our teams around the world.

A major challenge was to find an efficient solution to supply energy and HVAC to such an immense building. Our response was to create a central energy plant with 40-megawatt generator backup capacity, providing 100% redundancy in case of supply failure.

Efficient water use was also a key requirement. Our design features a chilled water plant with a 1.1 million litre domestic water storage tank, a quadraplex pumping system sized at 10,300 l/min (2,750 GPM), 350,000 litre fire water storage tanks with two electric fire pumps sized at 3,800 l/min (1,000 GPM), and a cooling tower makeup storage tank of 1.7 million litres.

The solutions we have developed for KCH have been devised by our experts from around the world working together as a team. We worked on the concept phase of the central utilities and energy plant in Dallas and oversaw the design and development in Canada, including the air handling floor and building tower. Local ICT support was provided in Dubai. Buildings and Information Modelling (BIM), and drafting support, was provided by our team in India