Vinci, McAlpine and BDP delivering Nightingale hospital
Integrated Health Projects, a joint venture between Vinci and Sir Robert McAlpine, has been selected to convert Manchester Central Convention Centre into a 650-bed emergency hospital for Covid-19 patients, with BDP picked to design the facility.
The construction contract for Nightingale Hospital North West and the other emergency Nightingale hospitals to be built to cope with the pandemic, including at the ExCel conference centre in London, were awarded through the ProCure22 framework, which awards contracts to private firms for NHS projects.
Other contractors on the framework include Bam, Galliford Try HPS, Graham, Interserve and Kier Health.
The contract award was accelerated due to the emergency nature of the Nightingale projects. BDP will be undertaking the engineering as well as design work, under the brief.
Alan Kondys, framework director at Integrated Health Projects, said: “We are supporting the ProCure22 programme to deliver these projects nationally and when asked to deliver Manchester we had no hesitation to respond and make a contribution towards this effort.
“We are collaborating with ProCure22 to offer and coordinate resources to deliver other projects as required.”
The JV, founded in 2003, is on site to deliver a cancer research facility at the Christie in Manchester and a critical care unit at Preston hospital.
Under the Government’s initiative, the 190,000 sq ft Manchester Central Convention Centre is to be converted into a temporary hospital with 650 beds for coronavirus patients, and the potential for 100 more, and is expected to be operational by mid-April.
Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, said after the convention centre was chosen: “As the owners of Manchester Central Convention Complex, we have worked with the Ministry of Defence and health services to make the building urgently available for this vital use.
“The need to establish this new hospital underlines the serious nature of the Covid-19 pandemic we all face, but also shows how seriously it is being responded to and I hope the public are reassured by the swiftness of this action.”
After work started to convert London’s ExCel conference centre into a 4000-bed hospital to provide increased capacity during the Covid-19 pandemic, additional ‘Nightingale’ sites in Birmingham, Cardiff, Swansea, Glasgow, Belfast, Bristol and Harrogate, as well as Manchester, were announced.
