Two contractors to vie for Northside Hospital build

A render of the proposed Northside Hospital. Both tenderers have extensive experience building hospitals. Image: ACT Government.

The new Northside Hospital is one step closer after the ACT Government whittled down the candidates to build the billion dollar-plus piece of infrastructure to two experienced contractors.

The Northside Hospital Project in Bruce will be the largest single health infrastructure project undertaken in the ACT and will be delivered via early contractor involvement (ECI).

After the expression of interest process closed in late June, the government has now invited two shortlisted tenderers to respond to a request for tender – CPB Contractors Pty Ltd and Multiplex Construction Pty Ltd.

Both have built hospital projects across Australia. Multiplex has just delivered Canberra Hospital’s $660 million Critical Services Building.

Minister for Health Rachel Stephen-Smith said the short-listed tenderers were selected due to their extensive experience in delivering major health infrastructure and their commitment to creating new training and job opportunities throughout the project, including for women and First Nations people.

“They’re great opportunities for apprenticeships because they are long construction projects,” she said.

Major Projects Canberra will handle the tender process. It is expected to be awarded in early 2025 with enabling works to begin in 2025-26 and demolition to follow.

Construction is not expected until 2026-27.

Ms Stephen-Smith said community and staff feedback on the Northside Clinical Services plan would feed into the tender evaluation.

“We’ll continue to work with the community with stakeholders, with consumers and the workforce around the planning in parallel with request for tender process,” she said.

“So it will certainly feed into that process over the next few months as we continue to get further feedback from the community, further feedback from staff and further technical work that’s being done at the North Canberra hospital site at the moment.”

Ms Stephen Smith said the government had budgeted more than $1 billion for the project but could not be more specific given the commercial process.

“We’re not going to put a specific dollar figure on it, because part of the response to the request for tender is to give us an estimate of what can be delivered at different price points,” she said.

Ms Stephen-Smith said the early contractor involvement model allowed for ongoing advice about the constructability of different design options and efficiencies that could be made.

“Considering the experiences that the contractors had in other jurisdictions with the use of different materials, different construction techniques, different options of putting together a major health facility, that might mean it’s a better value for money proposition,” she said.

“We might be able to deliver more for the same amount of funding.”

Negotiations with Calvary Health Care on a compensation and costs package for the compulsory acquisition are continuing after the government extended the claim deadline by 12 months until 2 July 2025.