Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 12 March 2019
459. Deputy Stephen Donnelly asked the Minister for Health further to Parliamentary Question No. 1195 of 20 June 2017, if he will provide the international benchmarking exercise used to compare the construction cost of the planned national children’s hospital with other hospitals built throughout the world; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12310/19]
View answerThe National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB) has statutory responsibility for planning, designing, building and equipping the new children's hospital and outpatient and urgent care centres.
Following evaluation by the NPHDB in early 2017 of main construction tenders and the selection of preferred contractors, the final cost of the design, build, and equipment programme for which the NPHD is responsible was €983m. At the time, an NPHDB post-tender exercise, led by quantity surveyors Linesight, benchmarked construction costs of the new children's hospital against construction costs for major acute hospitals internationally. That exercise demonstrated that construction elements of the project compared favourably to the costs of international projects of a similar size and scale.
Following completion of the second stage of the two-stage tender procurement process in November 2018, the capital project is now at €1.433n. Prior to concluding the Guaranteed Maximum Price process an international hospital construction costs benchmarking exercise, carried out by AECOM for the NPHDB, concluded that in terms of cost per sq.m, the new hospital was at the higher end but aligned with similar projects.
I have asked the NPHDB to respond to you directly regarding the benchmarked post tender construction costs exercise led by Linesight and the international hospital construction costs benchmarking exercise carried out by AECOM.
