Smoke Damage in a Hospital

Customer:             Leading Cancer Treatment Hospital
Location:               Chelsea, London
Instructing Party: UK Loss Adjusting Company

Service Illustration:

Contamination Profiling, Scope of Works Preparation, Clerk of Works, Inventory Preparation 

Background:

The Customer suffered extensive fire damage to the plant room located in the roof of the 4th floor and to offices located in a courtyard. Smoke logging of adjacent wards was extensive and particularly severe in the Critical Care Unit (CCU). water damage was restricted to floors immediately below the seats of fire. 

Issues:

Being a world renowned cancer treatment hospital it was imperative to re-establish in-patient services as soon as possible. This required the inventorying and assessment for possible decontamination of hundreds of items of medical equipment and subsequent quality control checks on cleaned equipment.

DFA carried out a detailed visual inspection of the affected structure, specialist and non-specialist medical equipment, followed by chemical swab analyses, to determine the level of any corrosive chloride contamination produced by burning PVC. Chloride levels were found to be negligible but staining on plastics from tar deposits was severe in the CCU area. Equipment was categorised by damage then DFA liaised with the restoration contractor and original equipment manufacturers to ensure acceptance of cleaned items. DFA also prepared a detailed inventory of the contents of a major section of the hospital and produced scopes of work for the decontamination of the affected clinical areas.

Benefits of using DFA:

Working closely with the appointed loss adjuster and damage restoration company DFA were able to convince the original equipment manufacturers to accept back into service over £1.5M worth of decontaminated equipment. The contents inventory was used to efficiently settle the contents claim and the decontamination scopes of work were used as part of the buildings claim negotiations.