The Network Failure Anomaly: Is Our Second Biggest Hospital Behind The Eight Ball Nearly One Year On?

In February 2023 at the peak of Summer, Christchurch Hospital experienced a blackout that left staff scrambling. Nearly 1 year on, NZR sees how CH stacks up with Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin.

On a sweltering Summer’s day, a single power failure was the trigger point that later that same day led to a complete power failure in the city’s Accident and Emergency department and Acute Services building. In the chaos of the subsequent hours, staff rallied to keep patients out of danger and hospital management went on the offensive to deal with the ensuing media glare that fell on the country’s second largest hospital.

The fact that Wellington owns the network and tests it on a quarterly basis could be a telling difference between it and Christchurch. In the past 5 years the Capital’s hospital has had no blackouts or outages.

NZR

“In the event of an incident we would have technicians attend and safely manage the disconnection”.

HNZ, 6 November 2023

David Meates (pictured) lambasted the Ministry of Health over the blackout incident of February 2023. (Source: davidmeantes.nz)

Purely by chance, a worker on site called an absent colleague who had an idea what had caused the blackout. During the earlier failure, workers had removed off-site an ubilical cable. It was as a precautionary measure but it was this move that prevented the hospital’s backup generators from kicking into gear when they were required. Click below to see the original article (paid subscribers have full access) to read about former DBH boss David Meates’ response.

Powell Fenwick’s investigation identified this network issue as a ‘core design issue’. On 6 November, HNZ wrote that “An engineering solution is currently being developed so the generators will operate with a disconnected umbilical cable on a high voltage circuit breaker. This is an interim solution implemented until the engineering solution is commissioned.”

Asked just what the ‘interim solution’ is, HNZ responded “In the event of an incident we would have technicians attend and safely manage the disconnection”.

In this article, NZR looks at the issue of blackouts and whether the Christchurch Hospital incident was an anomaly or part of a nationwide issue.

As a starting point, all hospitals are required to have yearly blackout tests. This likely involves “IQP (Independent Qualified Practitioner) witnessed test which goes towards the 12A (Certificate of Compliance) and BWOF (Building Warrant of Fitness) which mirrors the other campus.”

For Christchurch Hospital, the yearly test is the only one it undertakes. HNZ wrote that the “generators are also tested on load every two weeks but this does not cause an outage”.

Unlike Christchurch Hospital, Wellington’s testing regime is more rigorous and the hospital comes with a point of difference.