ELS designs and specifies the fixed joinery for clinics, pharmacies, wards and hospital support areas, and ALUMAX manufactures and installs it. The difficulty is that every surface has to be cleaned aggressively, stay dimensionally stable in Sarawak humidity, and still open up for a technician working on the services behind it.
Chlorine, alcohol and quaternary ammonium wipes attack standard laminate edges and MDF cores. The detail that matters is the joint: seamless coved solid-surface counters, welded or thermoformed corners, no open particleboard edge at a wet zone, and sealed junctions where the counter meets the wall. We specify the substrate and the edge treatment, not just the finish colour.
Infection control fails at ledges, unsealed plinth recesses and cabinet undersides that a cleaner cannot reach. Wall-hung base units with a clear floor void, coved skirting returns, closed top surfaces on tall cabinets, and radiused internal corners are drawing decisions made at setting-out — they cannot be retrofitted after installation.
Sarawak humidity plus continuously conditioned clinical air creates a temperature gradient across the cabinet carcass. Timber-based cores swell at cut edges, hinges drift, and doors stop closing flush. Moisture-resistant boards, full edge banding on every cut face including the hidden ones, and ventilated backs where a unit sits against an external wall are specified for that gradient.
Patient confidentiality is an acoustic problem before it is a policy problem. A consultation room sharing a stud wall with a waiting area, or a dispensing counter facing an open queue, leaks speech. Joinery can carry part of the answer — dense-core storage walls used as an acoustic mass layer, sealed service penetrations, counter screens sized to break the direct line of speech.
Sink traps, isolation valves, medical gas outlets, data and nurse-call cabling all sit behind or inside cabinetry that a technician will need to open at short notice. Removable access panels, demountable plinths, and cabinet backs cut around service runs are coordinated with the M&E setting-out so maintenance does not mean cutting a finished carpentry face.
A reception or dispensing counter has to serve a standing patient, a seated patient and a wheelchair user from the same run, while staff work at it all day. That means a split-level top, a knee recess at the accessible bay, and a floor plan checked against trolley and bed turning circles before the counter length is fixed.
A curved counter that holds records and equipment out of sight, with a full-height storage wall and a lit niche that keeps the front face uncluttered.
Timber-fronted reception counter paired with a full-height dispensary and display wall, where lit open shelving has to stay wipeable and the closed bays stay lockable.
A wet-bench sink run with sealed splashback, overhead wall cabinets clear of the clinician's head height, and a built-in exam couch with drawer storage that cleans out underneath.
A curved solid-surface counter worked from both sides — charting height inside, public height outside — with overhead cabinets and an open backwall that keeps consumables within arm's reach.
Dual dispensing counters with stone tops and defined POS bays, back-wall dispensary shelving set out to a pack module, and OTC gondolas that leave a clean queue path.
Bedhead panel units that carry the services cleanly and take knocks from beds and trolleys, plus a nurse utility counter and sink run sized for the ward's dirty/clean separation.
Storage credenza and desk-side pedestals sized to patient-file formats, with a display shelving wall and tall cabinet run for records that have to stay locked.
ELS holds a design library covering every space above — layouts, material directions and joinery details developed for this sector. It is a commercial asset, so it is not published or downloadable. We take you through the sets relevant to your project, and you keep the ones your brief actually needs.
Send us the floor plan and the room schedule, and we will scope the joinery package for quotation against the measured areas.
Images on this page are concept studies from the ELS design library. They illustrate how these spaces are specified; they are not photographs of completed projects, and they do not represent a fixed product, inclusion or price. Commercial scope is quoted against a measured survey and an approved specification.