BDP Selected for Leicester Hospitals PFI

The joint venture between Equion and Serco consortium has achieved preferred candidate status on the University Hospitals of Leicester (UHL) Pathway Project, for which BDP is architect acting for Laing O'Rourke, the construction partner.

Formed in April 2000 following the merger of Glenfield, Leicester General Hospital and Leicester Royal Infirmary, UHL is one of the largest and busiest acute teaching hospital Trusts in England, employing over 11,000 staff across its three sites.  As well as providing services to a million people across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, the Trust provides a number of specialist services both nationally and internationally.

Martin Sutcliffe, BDP Project Director said "the consortium's bid was submitted as one of two in December (2004) and we are enormously pleased to have heard that we are on the winning side. While the BDP team is based in our Manchester office we have had input from other BDP offices in Dublin, Sheffield and Belfast together with our BDP International colleagues from the Groupe 6 practice in France, making this a truly firm wide effort. The involvement of Groupe 6 represents the groundbreaking application of mainland European hospital design principles in the UK."

The project for the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust is the largest investment for an NHS hospital rebuilding and modernisation scheme outside of London to-date.  It involves the modernisation and refurbishment of three Leicester Hospitals Leicester Royal Infirmary, Glenfield and Leicester General Hospital.

The Leicester Royal Infirmary site includes a new children's hospital and an extension to the cancer services building. In addition the majority of the existing estate will be refurbished in conjunction with the implementation of a new site master plan.

At the Glenfield we are doubling the amount of clinical accommodation with a new Women's Hospital and Renal and Urology Service. In addition we are refurbishing a significant amount of the retained estate. A new research laboratory building is also included on this site.

At the General Hospital a new campus master plan will contain a new state of the art Centre for Planned Care and Rehabilitation. A new Multi-Professional Education and Training Centre located on the site will provide cutting edge shared multi professional teaching and also clinical skills education and training.  This will be a partnership between UHL, De Montfort University and the University of Leicester.

Financial close of this £761M project is expected in Spring 2006.  Completion will be phased with new construction being completed by 2009 and the refurbishment completed by 2011

This PFI healthcare win comes shortly after Consort Healthcare's announcement of preferred bidder status with BDP as architect at Wakefield's Pinderfields General Hospital and Pontefract General Infirmary under a single £250M PFI project.

The project team is:
BDP - architect, interiors and landscape architect, with French partner Groupe 6
Hoare Lea - mechanical and electrical engineer
DLE - quantity surveyor
Watermans - civil and structural engineer
SDC - health care planner