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In November, over 170 businesses, including 68% small and medium-sized enterprises, met in Plymouth to hear about plans for future healthcare infrastructure delivery of the Women and Children’s Hospital in Truro and Derriford Emergency Care Hospital in Plymouth, and the local skills and employment opportunities these projects will provide in the South-West of England.

Through presentations and networking, participants met with representatives from New Hospital Programme (NHP), University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, Willmott Dixon, Cornwall Construction Skills Advisory Forum and Building Plymouth.

NHP has the potential to provide work to thousands of businesses, big and small, from across the UK over several years. Today’s event is part of our ongoing programme of engagement to ensure that firms across the UK get ready to bid for work and put themselves in the best position possible to be successful.

Speaking about the event, NHP’s Chief Programme Officer, Morag Stuart, said:

“These projects are at the forefront of transforming the country’s future hospital delivery. We want to build a collaborative supply chain that will deliver hospitals faster and at less cost – as well as an enduring capability to build hospitals far into the future. Connecting a wide variety of companies across the South-West and beyond is key to the programme’s success.”

You can view the slides presented at the event in the links below:

• Download the full event slides
• Download the preview of NHP Skills Guide

Yesterday, the Chancellor has delivered her Autumn Budget Statement and confirmed that the Health Secretary will set out further details of his review into the New Hospital Programme in the coming weeks, with a publication to follow in the new year.

This is supplemented by the published Budget report (linked here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/autumn-budget-2024) which confirms increased capital spending for DHSC including continued delivery of the New Hospital Programme on a more sustainable and deliverable footing. As previously confirmed, work will continue at pace to replace those seven hospitals wholly or primarily built with RAAC.

Remaining schemes will be delivered through a rolling programme of major investment, as part of the government’s commitment to providing hospital infrastructure investment.

We thank you for your continued support to the NHP. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact the team at nhs.suppliers@nhs.net

An insightful piece from our Executive Commercial Director, Richard Lennard, following his experience as a speaker at IHEEM last week!

 

I’ve only been working in the NHS for 7 months and what astounds me is the opportunity we have here on the New Hospital Programme (NHP) to do something really special.  We have an opportunity to build new hospitals that are fit for purpose, for the future, and to make them the best they can be – so that they become ‘the hospitals our people deserve’.

Yet, for the programme to be truly successful it is vital that we bring together all of the right people – from the DHSC, NHSE, the Trusts, suppliers, industry bodies, skills bodies, local communities and many more – and that we work together, in partnership towards our shared goals.  Here are three reasons why:

1.         This programme is really complex – it’s big, it’s national.  It clearly has some risks, but far more opportunities

NHP is a national, publicly funded organisation and it is one of the largest infrastructure programmes in the UK – if not ‘the’ biggest.

The thing that makes this programme unique is that I can’t think of another programme that has multiple locations dotted all over the country AND multiple clients (in our case, Trusts) working together as a national team.

Given this, there are some obvious risks – the most obvious one relating to supply chain capacity constraints, however I see so much opportunity.  Our programme is an opportunity to attract people – from within and from outside our sector.  It will touch thousands of organisations, whether that be organisations supporting and supplying to it, or individuals that live in locality who run businesses that will benefit from the hospitals.

2.         Transformation is at the heart of everything we do, and everyone will play a role in that in one way or another

NHP represents a dramatic shift from traditional, siloed ways of hospital building. We have a unique opportunity to transform the way hospitals are designed, procured, and constructed.

We want to look back on our work in years to come and to have achieved the following outcomes:

–  Enhanced patient experience

–  Improved clinical care

–  Improved workforce wellbeing and efficiency

–  Use of latest digital technologies

–  Delivery of green, sustainable hospitals

–  Integration with local communities and the wider health system

However, we can’t deliver this alone.  The Trusts are our partners in delivery and we are also focused on creating the right industry partnerships to achieve success.

 

3.         We’ve definitely had some early successes but the real prizes are yet to come

We’ve had our early wins – to name a few: the Dyson Cancer Centre is a new hospital which has opened to patients, and last week Midland Metropolitan hospital opened its doors – the team have done a fantastic job, despite numerous setbacks over the years.

Looking ahead, there are three key roles at tier 1 of the supply chain: the Programme Delivery Partner (expected to be awarded in Q4 2024); Main Works Partnerships (SQ launch expected in Q4 2024); and Digital Partner contracts.  These tier 1 contracts will lead to thousands of opportunities further down the supply chain for businesses of all types and sizes and from many sectors, over a number of years.

Our priority is to build a supply chain that delivers efficiently, to a high quality, collaboratively and sustainably.  We want to create long term collaborative relationships with our main works partners, where we focus on outcomes and reward performance.

Ultimately, we want to create an environment where we are focused on getting everything right for the first patient – that is what’s important to us and how we will measure our success.  To achieve this we have to bring together all of the people, innovation, and skills we need in a way that adds up to something bigger than the sum of its parts.  That is the opportunity NHP presents and that is how we will deliver something truly transformational.

An insightful piece from our Director of Markets and Supply Chain, Emma Whigham.

 

It was great to talk to so many suppliers at the IHEEM Healthcare Estates Conference on Tuesday in Manchester and see the growing interest and excitement there is in the industry for the New Hospital Programme (NHP).

Many businesses told me that they were interested to hear more about what we are looking to achieve on NHP and to find out about how we are engaging with the market to shape our commercial approach.

The NHP is currently one of the largest infrastructure programmes in the UK and arguably one of the most important.  We have a significant and essential opportunity to transform the way we deliver healthcare infrastructure for the NHS.

I can personally give testament to the difference a new facility can make – I grew up in the South side of Birmingham where we used to have the old Victorian hospital in Selly Oak but now, we have the modern Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Edgbaston.  This change has made a huge difference – we went from having something dark, with paint peeling off the walls and small hospital rooms to something light and airy!

Our Commercial Strategy has so far been focused on the biggest contracts we need – the Programme Delivery Partner and Main Works Partner contracts.  These are close to completion and close to starting procurement respectively.

However, our market analysis has gone so much further than this and has come across a broad spectrum of challenges across the supply chain to deliver these hospitals.  This analysis helps us to determine where to focus our efforts – so that we concentrate on the things that make the biggest difference.

As an example – it will not come as surprise that MEP makes up a massive proportion of hospitals (we estimate 35-40% of the delivery cost of a hospital is MEP for NHP) and so poses a significant risk to delivery.  We know that there is a capacity gap for what we want to deliver (due to a shortage of skills and labour, bespoke ways of doing things, not enough offsite activity etc). We also recognise that strong relationships exist between Main Works Contractors and their MEP suppliers.  So, any solutions we develop must take account of these factors.  We’ve been working with Main Works Contractor and MEP suppliers to understand this and develop the right commercial approach.

Other priority areas in the Tier 2 and 3 markets where we have identified challenges include facades and common components. We are engaging with these supply chain markets to test our procurement and commercial approaches in these areas too.

But once the risks are identified, how do we plan to intervene in order to mitigate them?

Here are just some of the critical interventions that will help us to significantly mitigate risks and have broader benefits:

· Regional supply chain strategies:

We recognise that no one part of England is the same.  For example, the challenges in the South West are different to the Midlands, East and North).  We need to identify and focus on what makes success at local level – smoothing potential bottlenecks and regional supply chain shortages whilst also enabling on time delivery for construction.

· Prototyping:

Hospital 2.0 is our platform for delivery for delivering hospitals for the future.  It is our standard design kit, set of rules, processes and the building blocks for delivering hospitals.  It is built upon solid foundations but contains new (and in some cases untested in this scenario) elements.  We are looking at how we test the novel aspects and work with different parts of the market to prototype different parts.

Look out for more information on Hospital 2.0 in a future blog.

As we approach the start of the Main Works Partners procurement, we are focusing our efforts on those parts of the supply chain that are very important to us in the delivery of hospitals – and we’ve seen from other programmes that the small and medium sized enterprises at the lower tiers of the supply chain are often critical to deliver a programme of this size.

There is a lot more work to do – and we plan to continue to engage extensively with the market. But we are confident that our work identifying challenges, mitigating risks and shaping the market will put us in the best possible position to deliver this transformational and critically important programme.

We’re currently holding a series of events across the country designed to bring together the New Hospital Programme, NHS Trusts and some of the major companies anticipated to form the future supply chain. These ‘Meet the Trust’ events are an opportunity to learn more about individual site masterplans, the progress made to date and demonstrate the benefits they will bring to local communities and industry.

Our first event was held on 24 September 2024 in Bolton. You can view all the slides from the events that have taken place to date below:

• Download the slides from 24 September – North Region
• Download the slides from the 1 October – London and East of England
• Download the slides from the 15 October – East of England
• Download the slides from the 17 October – South Region
• Download the slides from 22 October – Midlands and East of England

Earlier this summer, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced that there was to be a review of the New Hospital Programme. You may recall that we welcomed this review as a timely opportunity to ensure the programme is on the soundest possible footing for delivery.

The review is being undertaken at pace for a swift conclusion on the changes to be made ensuring an affordable and realistic delivery schedule. This will include a series of options and recommendations for the overall size and phasing of the programme for Ministers to consider.

Some schemes are out of the scope of the review. These include all RAAC schemes and those that have approved Full Business Cases for their main construction, and any associated phases that have specific commitments. These 21 schemes represent a £multi-billion commitment to investment by the government, demonstrating that whatever the wider outcomes of the review, NHP remains a significant investment warranting a transformational delivery approach and industry-wide collaboration.

The Terms of Reference (ToR) of the Review, plus a list of Schemes that are in and out of Scope can now be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-hospital-programme-review-terms-of-reference

Whilst the review is ongoing, we are continuing to progress with planning for the launch of the main works partnership framework procurement. We are working towards an SQ launch later in 2024, and further details will follow once the necessary approvals have been secured from government

Thank you to those who joined us in-person for the Hospital 2.0 Technical Engagement Workshop on 10 April 2024.

On the day we shared the latest Programme updates and how you can deploy Hospital 2.0 – the system that creates an integrated approach to providing optimisied, standardised and repeatable solutions for hospital scheme development, design, construction and operation.

Core sessions explored the clinical engagement underpinning the Hospital 2.0 system, industrialisation, design philosophy, universal grid, Mechanical, Electrical & Public Health (MEP) approach and design guardianship and technical assurance.

Click here to download the slides from the day.

 

In late October 2023 the New Hospital Programme (NHP) shared a Market Update Briefing with regards to the Programme Delivery Partner (PDP). The Market Update Briefing was an opportunity for NHP to update suppliers within the market about the PDP, following market sounding activities that have taken place. This Briefing included an update on the programme and further information about the indicative outline scope of the PDP.

Click here to download the briefing pack.

Thank you to those who joined us online and in-person at our flagship Industry Day on 13 December, our first major event engaging with contractors, suppliers, and Trusts. Despite coming up against industrial action affecting travel and wintery weather, we were delighted to be able to welcome more than 220 guests in-person and 300 guests online. 

On the day we shared our vision to create a truly transformative approach to designing and building hospitals, embracing Modern Methods of Construction, standardised design in manufacture and assembly, and the latest technology. 

The Supply Markets Management team presented the new Programme Delivery Scorecard and Hospital 2.0. We also demonstrated our ambition to create a sustainable supply chain, outlined how we plan to meet our Net Zero carbon commitment, and explored how our smart buildings will interact with patients and clinicians to improve the future of care.

Our message was that collaboration is paramount to deliver these new facilities, drawing on the expertise, skill and creativity of Trusts and companies of all sizes, across a broad range of sectors.

Parliamentary Under Secretary of State Lord Markham spoke at the event and expressed his support for the programme and our forward-thinking approach. 

“The energy and the contributions from those in the room and those online was fantastic. This was our first major event as we outline to the commercial sector and Trusts how we will work with them to deliver facilities in a truly transformational way.

“We need full engagement and collaboration from contractors, suppliers, innovators and our NHS partners if we are to succeed and I’m delighted to say that’s what we got. We are now looking forward to building on that as we move into 2023.”

Natalie Forrest, Senior Responsible Owner

Click here to download slides from the event