Gateway Community Health Super Clinic

The building

A newly constructed two (2) storey building, integrated with adjoining Gateway Community Health Centre and facing onto the Wodonga main street. The $10 million “super clinic” is constructed on the Mylon bus depot site and was made possible by a $6.65 million grant from former health minister Nicola Roxon.

The building has been designed to accommodate specialists’ rooms enabling a range of health and allied professionals to provide multidisciplinary and integrated health services. The care is provided through GP’s, nurses and allied health professionals with health services including psychology services, physiotherapy, podiatry, midwife care, sexual health nursing, mental health nursing, refugee health nursing and onsite pathology.

The approach

Although the super clinic is not strictly deemed to be a hospital environment, occupant profiles and likely patient characteristics were carefully examined for the subject super clinic. To a reasonably lesser extent, similar philosophies found in health care facilities were also adopted to this super clinic facility which included compartmentation and horizontal evacuation strategies. Where necessary, suitable methods of protection were recommended to building elements located within close proximity to fire sources and areas which may lead to potential fire spread.

The adoption of a fire detection and alarm system throughout enabled the egress analysis to conclude towards a satisfactory level of occupancy life safety during complete evacuation of the building. Finally, provision of a fire alarm monitoring system minimised the potential for fire authority response delays allowing the fire brigade having jurisdiction to provide its operational support towards the fire protection services strategy throughout the building.