Regional hospital St. Maarten, Mechelen, Belgium

Sint-Maarten Clinics in the Belgian town of Mechelen are rebuilding their facilities. In the course of the construction project, the present locations Rooienberg, Duffel, Leopoldstraat and Zwartzustersvest will be consolidated under one roof. The Belgian state is looking to set the pace for state-of-the-art patient services. The facilties will be inaugurated in 2018.

Top concrete finish, tight schedules

The biggest challenges facing the site arise from the complexity of workflow, the superior concrete finish required by the architects, combined with very tight scheduling. 55.300 m² of walls on 5 levels are being poured at record speed. It is an ideal case for the StarTec wall system with its all-plastic facing alkus. The wood-free facing delivers a first class concrete finish from the first pour to the last. The staircases and cores are all being poured in class 3 exposed concrete, checked and accepted without a hitch.

Slabs and 500 m of beams

The expansive and complex slab layout included some 300 m² compensation areas that needed to be planned in detail using the MevaFlex conventional girder method. 500 running metres of beams need to be supported so as to deflect high concrete loads to the left and right side during each pour, before extensive reshoring is put in place for the concrete to set completely.

X-ray bunkers in baryt concrete 

The hospital’s x-ray bunker requires walls 1.1 m to 1.95 m thick and slabs up to a thickness of 1.8 m. They are being built using baryt concrete which is predominantly used whenever strict radiation protection requirements are specified. It is very dence and weighs 3.2 kN/m³ in the walls and 4.2 kN/m³ in the slabs. For this job, MEVA’s heavy duty wall system Mammut 350 proved the best choice to handle the extreme pour pressure up to 100 kN/m².

Find out more about the project here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8F9IREBm2I