Horses for courses?

There are indications that Laing O’Rourke now has an edge over its rival Balfour Beatty in the race to secure the £800 million Monklands Hospital project in Scotland, a NHS Lanarkshire scheme.

Monklands Hospital has been down to these last two contractors for quite some time but the new very risk adverse nature of Balfour Beatty might allow this job to fall into the lap of Laing O’Rourke, it is understood.

Switched team?

There is even the rumour that BB pulled out of the process (insurances and liabilities issues?) and switched the team, or part of it and project directors being “king” within the firm, from this job to the other current Scottish job at Wick and Fort William.

Do we have a winner?

A winner for Monklands will be announced in the not too distant future.

Currie and Brown is the QS while Keppie is the architect and WSP is doing civil and structural work.

80 percent quality

Otherwise the health sector has been facing the other two schemes with logistics issues though a total package of £65 million to £70 million and Balfour Beatty may have preferred this work as its based on 20 percent cost and 80 percent quality.

Thus it may be the case that BB has beaten Kier, Graham and Robertson to this work. These firms are all on the HSF 3 framework. New firm on the framework McLaughlin and Harvey pulled out. Bids for this job have been in for three or four weeks and might be the case the BB prepared a better bid for these jobs knowing it was set to pull out of the Monklands process.

80 percent quality

This is a Thomson Grey job. Cleverly the client worked out that tying them together might get a better response from contractors. The award for this work will be made by end of this week, Friday 24, 2023.

There are two health jobs out to tender in the Highlands. These are a bigger job in Fort William, Lochaber and a smaller job in Wick, Caithness.

Wick is a refurbishment and Fort William new build. Well over 150 miles between them and over a four hour car drive for two schemes which have come out as a bundle.

RAF Station Leuchars

Another Scottish job where tenders have been returned is at RAF Station Leuchars where the Defence Infrastructure Organisation is building a £20 million medical and dental facility and Buro Happold is lead consultant. Contractors have bid for this job via the Crown Commercial Services framework.

ModuleCo

Off site manufacturer ModuleCo picked up the £15 million contract to fabricate operating theatres and an endoscopy facility for Torbay Hospital on behalf of Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust.

This is being done from ModuleCo’s Forest of Dean site in Gloucestershire. Kensington Taylor Architects (KTA) worked on the design to RIBA stage 2 and retained in a quality control capacity. ModuleCo will work on the detailed design. Hulley and Kirkwood is the building services engineer, which worked on the scheme to RIBA stage 2 and now has a quality control role.

ModuleCo working here

The funding can be traced back to STP wave 3.

The other firms on the SBS framework when this was bid were Actavo Building Solution, Caledonian Modular, Cotaplan (Modular Buildings), Elite Systems (GB), Elliott Group, Extraspace Solutions, Ideal Building Systems, McAvoy Group, ModuleCo Healthcare, ModuleCo, MTX Contracts, PKL Group, Portakabin, Premier Modular, R G Stones (Buildings), REDS10 and Wernick Buildings.

This scheme was put out to tender and Peninsula Consultingwhich continues to  provide project management support.

HIP 2

Of course Torbay is a former HIP 2 scheme site now commonly referred to as national hospital programme (NHP).

This team was architect IBI working with Kensington Taylor Architects (KTA) and Hoare Lea and Partners, Turner & Townsend with Aecom on civil and structural engineering. Two other teams, AHR/WSP and Ryder Architects, were also short-listed for the design work. The three were interviewed on or near to January 7/8, 2021.

The other long listed contenders to work on this £450 million scheme were HLM Architects, ADP Architects/Mott MacDonald, Llewelyn-Davies and BDP.

The other firms short-listed for the QS work were Arcadis, Aecom and RLB. Currie and Brown declined, it is understood.

Price WaterhouseCoopers picked up the service strategy and healthcare planning commission.

Chris Knights is now the hospital redevelopment programme director. He came from Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust.