6 Nov 2006

Interserve, the services, maintenance and building group, has been awarded the first pilot project for NHS Procure Scotland. The award by NHS Fife Board is worth over £40 million and involves work at two major hospitals in Fife: Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy and Queen Margaret Hospital in Dunfermline.

NHS Procure Scotland is a procurement route developed by NHS Fife for NHS Scotland to deliver capitally funded healthcare facilities. It is based on the successful ProCure21 model used in England and covers both new and refurbishment healthcare schemes. 

Interserve, working collaboratively with NHS Fife, will deliver its services in three phases. The first of these will be an enabling works package which will prepare the Victoria Hospital site for the creation of a new hospital facility which is being procured separately under PPP. It includes the relocation of car parks, diversion of utilities and ground remediation. Other sundry works, such as a service yard, mortuary, roads and a generating facility, will follow in the second phase and will complete at the same time as the PPP development, anticipated for 2010.

The third phase is the main element of Interserve’s contract and comprises a major reconfiguration of Victoria and Queen Margaret hospitals once the PPP facility is in place. In this phase the hospitals will be remodelled and their services redesigned to take advantage of the new capacity offered by the PPP development.

“We have a strong record in the health sector,” said Adrian Ringrose, Chief Executive of Interserve Plc. “Our experience as one of the leading partners in the NHS’s ProCure21 programme has shown that the effectiveness of the supply chain is vital in delivering the facilities on time and to budget. For this contract we shall be using several Scottish suppliers alongside our ProCure21 partners, and together we look forward to providing high quality products that the people of Fife can be proud of.”

Dennis O’Keeffe, NHS Fife’s Projects Director, stated, “This is an important milestone for NHS Fife and for the NHS in Scotland, and would not have been possible without the forward-thinking support of the Scottish Executive Health Department and the generous help and collaboration afforded by the ProCure21 Team within the Department of Health’s Estates and Facilities Department.

“This is the first time that a public sector client in Scotland has used the latest (3rd Edition) of the NEC Contract (NEC3). NHS Fife’s choice of NEC3 is consistent with our desire to move away from a traditional reactive and hindsight-based contract strategy and to instead use a modern partnering approach.”