New lease on life after years of blood, sweat and tears

FOR 70 years it has processed blood in a disused pub, a converted office block and a ward at Sydney Hospital. Now the Red Cross Blood Service has its own specially designed building to handle nearly half a million bags of donated blood each year.

When a natural or man-made disaster hits, hospitals depend on an uninterrupted supply of blood and blood products and the new blood bank to be opened today has been designed to keep working through any emergency.

More than 500 staff have finished moving from the dark, warren-like, converted office block in Clarence Street, where blood sometimes got stranded between floors in the old freight lift. .

There are lifts in the new premises in Alexandria but, with an elegant spiral staircase connecting all four floors, they are barely used - certainly not for shifting blood, which comes in on the ground floor and remains there for processing, storage and distribution to hospitals across NSW and emergencies interstate.

Sophisticated sample testing samples is done in the upper levels, where scientists check for viruses and run the reference laboratory which does antibody identification for complex cases hospitals cannot do themselves.

John Murray, the production services manager, travelled the world to help get the best design for what he calls ''the most complicated manufacturing business I've been in''.

The Blood Service and its architects, BVNArchitecture, wanted a functional, reliable home where staff would enjoy working; natural light now floods every floor.

Mr Murray is delighted with the $73 million headquarters, which he says is easily ''the best in the country'' and already attracting overseas visitors.

It processes all blood donated in 26 collection centres across NSW and the ACT, including blood from Canberra, Newcastle and Wollongong where branches have closed.

The banks of coolrooms that hold platelets, red blood cells and frozen slabs of plasma are all set at differing temperatures, and all run on dual power systems so they will keep operating should one break. If power is lost, batteries maintain the correct fridge temperatures while one of two back-up diesel generating systems kick in and runs the centre.

To ensure the facility is ''disaster-proof'' there is also 150,000 litres of drinking water, more than 600,000 litres of water for firefighting, 10,000 litres of rainwater and even a 120,000-litre tank for sewage, enough to keep the place running for four days without services.

One of the main reasons for moving to O'Riordan Street is that it is within 15 minutes of the airport and much quicker to get blood to country areas or interstate and to Sydney's main hospitals when traffic can make it difficult to get through the CBD.

Despite the elaborate facilities, it does not collect blood. Donors can go to new facilities at Town Hall or in Elizabeth Street near Martin Place.