Healthcare

We apply our healthcare development control planning (DCP) expertise to evaluate proposed site locations, with a strategic focus on staff and patient movement, arrival experience, integration with existing infrastructure, and an eye on future requirements.  

Our thoughtful approach ensures that spatial layouts support efficient clinical workflows, enhance staff and patient wellbeing, and align with long-term wider masterplans. By analysing access routes, zoning, and operational adjacencies, we create adaptable frameworks that guide future growth and remain consistent with the clients’ vision for the site. And this all sits within our understanding of local community requirements, including broader masterplans and local authority strategic plans for improving the wider determinants of health.  

Creating healthy communities is key; enabling people to keep well at home and easily access health services in their local communities reduces demand on acute services. 

We’ve seen many changes in our years of designing exemplary healthcare buildings; large district general hospitals, trauma centres, community and diagnostic centres, and – in recent years – primary health centres. Throughout this changing landscape our continual investment and commitment to R&D and innovation has seen our team at the forefront of healthcare architecture and design principals. 

Covering a wide range of typologies from specialist acute clinical settings through to community health centres, from new build to refurbishment of live healthcare environments; our expertise always begins with immersive user engagement and an evidence-based, clinically-driven ethos that work hand-in-hand with elegant and sustainable architectural solutions. 

Our healthcare environments need to achieve a multitude of things, often all at the same time; reassuring for visitors, calming for patients, and vibrant for staff members to improve morale and wellbeing.  

Central to our interior design approach is the commitment to stress reduction through good design. We treat this holistically, developing interior design and wayfinding strategies that support patients, visitors and staff through their healthcare journey – from calming landscapes and intuitive wayfinding to clinical spaces that reduce infection, improve healing times and provide enjoyable working environments. 

Visiting a hospital can be a stressful and overwhelming experience for patients and their families. We believe a healing environment should be inherently connected to nature.  

Our ​landscape architecture team help to remove anxiety by creating welcoming, legible and scalable approaches to public spaces; from drop-off points to entrances, from access to green open spaces to biophilic interior design features.  

Our approach to external space in a health setting is driven and focused on people, wellbeing, functionality, innovation and sustainability. These key considerations help us establish therapeutic environments that aid recovery and create calm settings for all users. 

HLM is a well-established pioneer of ​modern methods of construction (MMC). In new build healthcare settings we favour MMC and design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA) for standardisation and sustainability. This approach delivers improved efficiencies, better safety onsite, and has the potential to significantly reduce embodied carbon. 

We understand how to apply repeatability in a sector that isn’t known for standardisation; HLM is a well-established pioneer of MMC. Our R&D team is working with the Construction Innovation Hub on a unique collaboration to co-design and develop a platform design (p-DfMA) for the healthcare sector. We’re also working with the UK government to create an open source MMC kit of parts to encourage the uptake of MMC in UK construction across all sectors. 

The NHS and HSE have outlined clear strategic priorities to tackle the climate crisis and persistent health inequalities. These priorities aim to transition both organisations to net zero carbon emissions while improving population health outcomes. Upholding their commitment to environmental and social sustainability aligns with HLM’s own ambitious approach to​sustainability and ​​social value. 

Wherever possible we prioritise a retrofit first approach to save significant amounts of embodied carbon, compared to building new. We’re experts in adapting existing buildings to fit demanding clinical standards.

With all projects we embed long-term sustainability and social value into our design process from the outset. We’re working with UK Net Zero Carbon Building Standards on an innovative approach to healthcare projects, and we’re proud to have delivered many highly sustainable healthcare settings. 

Supporting the UK’s ambition to become a world leader in life sciences, we combine our ​​higher education and healthcare expertise to design state-of-the-art research and innovation hubs.  

We create agile environments that support and nurture innovation and discovery, ready to evolve alongside technological advancements and shifting research priorities. Focusing on flexibility and future adaptability, we meet the complex and varied needs of the scientists, researchers and educators who are developing the life-changing treatments of the future.