St Vincent’s Private Hospital

The existing facility was deemed to no longer be fit for purpose, and in order to continue to provide the same quality of healthcare, St. Vincent’s Private Hospital considered it necessary to develop a state-of-the-art medical facility. This new private hospital is linked to St. Vincent's University Hospital via an underground link tunnel. 

Leading the project 

Given the healthcare expertise required to undertake such a project, Linesight was appointed at an early stage. This team brought a number of key skills to the project including large scale development on an acute hospital campus. The team were selected to provide both cost management and project management services on the project for a number of reasons, including:

• In-depth knowledge of high quality healthcare development
• A successful track record of project delivery on the St. Vincent’s hospital campus
• Brownfield site development which required asbestos and contaminated soil removal
• Project delivery adjacent to residential communities
• Delivery of large scale projects on live acute healthcare campus 

The new facility is approximately 28,000 sq.m., ranging in height from 3-8 stories, and accommodating 290 inpatient and day care beds, operating theatres, ICU, HDU, diagnostic imaging, laboratories, consulting suites and a technical services building of 522 sq.m. The double basement contains office, technical and storage accommodation with 283 car spaces with a gross floor area of 12,000 sq.m.

Challenging times and expectations 

The time at which the project took place coincided with the global downturn. This posed a challenge not only to the overall economy, but to construction in particular. This made for a challenging economic climate in which to complete such an ambitious development, on both the client and supplier side, and required extensive variations and management to ensure program delivery, on time and within budget.  

Acute hospital setting 

Because of the nature of the development, it meant that the works took place within a live acute hospital campus. This posed considerable challenges, as it was imperative to avoid disruption in a hospital operating full services, and to ensure the safety of patients, staff and visitors at all times. In addition, the delivery of the hospital became a turnkey project, which required all of the medical equipment to be installed, commissioned and fully operational prior to substantial completion. This requirement is unique for this type of healthcare development. The transition to the new facility took place two weeks after substantial completion was achieved with no interruption to the service. 

Balancing the expectations 

The team played a fundamental role in managing and accommodating the expectations of both of the major stakeholders in this project; St. Vincent’s Private Hospital and St. Vincent’s University Hospital to ensure that the project brief, design, budget and program were fully aligned.  

Project specifics 

At the outset of the project St. Vincent’s Private Hospital identified a number of key project outcomes which they required to be delivered. The Linesight team played a key role in the successfully delivery of these outcomes which included; 

• The provision of a high quality new private hospital co-located with St. Vincent’s University Hospital.
• A facility which provided 236 private in-patient beds and 54 day beds. The development was required to include for the procurement and installation of Group 2 and Group 3 Equipment, effectively creating a turnkey project
• A key objective was the delivery of the new facility while maintaining full services to the existing Private Hospital and the University Hospital
• Protection of Staff, Patients and general public were paramount throughout the development
• Service transfer to the new facility with minimal impact on service delivery. Two weeks after Practical Completion was achieved services transferred to the new facility with no operational downtime.