Ashe was involved in an important procedure recently at Milton Keynes University Hospital to demolish a redundant chimney.

Work started in January last year to help the hospital decarbonise and meet its energy efficiency targets. Ashe has been busy replacing old windows with thermally efficient double glazing and upgrading the hospital’s heating. The project also included installing the services for upgrading the steam generation for the hospitals autoclave sterilisation system, which used to rely on gas to power it. Ashe has now prepared the way for an electrically-heated system helping the NHS Trust to reduce its carbon emissions.

Contracts manager Steve Cockram explains: “Now the sterilising system is powered by cleaner electricity there’s no need for the ugly chimney, so we asked our colleagues at DBS Demolition Services to help us remove it. It took meticulous planning to maintain safety which was of paramount importance.

“It was quite a challenge because our works were adjacent to the entrance to the busy cardiology department and we needed to remove the chimney without disturbing the hospital’s normal activities.  After much planning we came up with a strategy that would allow us to carry out the demolition efficiently whilst keeping safety at the top of our priority list.

We created a 10-meter safety cordon then bankspeople held the staff, patients and visitors back for five minutes at a time so that no one was ever held up for very long.

The chimney didn’t have a lifting eye therefore we cut an opening in to both sides of the chimney and threaded chains through to allow us to cut the chimney down, lifting just 1.5m sections of the 12m chimney off at a time. The chimney sections were then taken away to a recycling centre to be stripped so the metal can be reused and not go to any waste.

Congratulations go to DBS Demolition Services on their sterling work which was acknowledged with being awarded Ashe’s Quarterly Sub-Contractor Safety Award accepted by Kevin Dilion on behalf of the DBS team.

The project forms part of the hospital’s Greener Future plans having secured £4.8m of funding from the Government’s Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme which aims to reduce emissions from public sector buildings by 75%.

Find out more about the project here: https://www.ashegroup.co.uk/2025/01/08/operation-decarb-at-milton-keynes-hospital/