Minister for Health John Denham helped start construction work on a cancer care centre in Southampton when he took the controls of a mechanical digger in a traditional ground breaking ceremony.
Skanska Construction is taking its proven expertise in hospital construction to Southampton General Hospital where it has a £6.5 million contract to build the new centre. Medical equipment and other facilities will bring the total value of the project to almost £20 million.
Working for the Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust, the company is to build a three-storey cancer care centre while ensuring that existing hospital services continue with minimum disruption.
The project started on site this month and is due to be completed in the summer of 2002. Within the cancer care centre Skanska will construct three huge bunkers for radiotherapy machines. Associated support facilities, a CT ultrasound and X-ray suite, ward accommodation and links to the main hospital building and ophthalmology unit are also included. Further work within the ophthalmology unit as well as related external and site drainage works will also be carried out.
This is the second hospital contract Skanska Construction has secured recently. In Edinburgh it is constructing a cancer research building for the University of Edinburgh in a £5.3 million project. Last year it also completed the 571-bed, £95 million PFI Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Greenwich on time and to budget and the Chepstow Neighbourhood Health Unit, Wales’ first PFI healthcare scheme.