INTERNATIONAL STORIES
HOW TO BUILD AN EMERGENCY HOSPITAL IN TWO WEEKS By Garry Bowker, Regional director of Integrated Health Projects (IHP) and VINCI Construction UK How do you build a 650-bed hospital in two weeks? Garry Bowker, Regional director of Integrated Health Projects (IHP) and VINCI Construction UK, tells the ‘behind-the-scenes’ story of the NHS Nightingale North West in Manchester.
I
HP (the VINCI Construction UK & Sir Robert McAlpine joint-venture) have extensive healthcare experience and capacity in the north-west of England delivering ProCure framework projects out of the VINCI Construction UK offices in Widnes. On 27 March IHP was advised by the Department of Health & Social Care and NHS England / NHS Improvement (NHSE / NHSI) that the new Manchester Nightingale hospital emergency facility was to be delivered under ProCure22 and Alan Kondys, IHP Framework Director, offered our services for immediate mobilisation. The NHS Nightingale Hospital North West experience began for me at 11am on Saturday, 28 March, when we were given the green light by NHSE/I to by deliver the project, and we were ‘all systems go’.
AN UNPRECEDENTED EXPERIENCE What followed was like nothing else I have ever been involved with, in all my years of healthcare construction and support services. We needed to address three priorities – sorting out key experts, lining up our supply
Garry Bowker, Regional director of Integrated Health Projects (IHP) and VINCI Construction UK: “Right at the beginning we did not know the full scale of the task we faced.”
65
