Nightingale Associates, BDP and Reiach &Hall are among the architects in the running to win a slice of a £900million deal to build hospitals and major healthcare facilities acrossScotland.Modelled on England’s Procure 21 and the WelshDesigned for Life frameworks the procurement system, FrameworksScotland, is the first of its kind run by NHS Scotland and will see£100 to £150 million spent each year over four to six years onnew-build facilities or refurbishment work for medium sized hospitalsand acute-care facilities.Not all the architects working witheight contractors or “principal supply chain partners” bidding for thework have been named but they are understood to also include KeppieDesign, HLM, Gareth Hoskins and BJM.Procure 21 and Designed for Life have both been hailed by architects as a massive improvement on PFI in terms of design quality.“Intheory the majority of healthcare work in Scotland should be completedthrough this framework,” said Andy Law, director at Reiach & Hall,which is bidding with Balfour Beatty. “Unless we’re willing to lose thebenefit of all that research and work that we’ve done {in healthcaredesign to date} we have to be involved. It would be quite a blow to usif we weren’t.”Upto five architectural practices are understood to have joined each ofthe contractor teams. Sandy Fergusson, director of BDP’s Glasgow studiosaid competition to get on the framework in the profession had beenintense.“Unless you’re on the framework you won’t do much healthcare {architecture} in Scotland,” he said.CapitaArchitecture was one firm that failed to team up with a contractor onthe shortlist, healthcare sector leader at the firm, Ron Morganadmitted.“We needed a partner to bid with but we didn’t getone,” he said. “You could say that {we’re disappointed}, but we’re notcrying into our beer over it.”Three to five contractors, eachwith their own architects, will be selected in the autumn from ashortlist of eight potential principal supply chain partners: BalfourBeatty, Laing O’Rourke, HPG, Carillion, Interserve, Morgan Ashurst,Morrison and collaborators Robertson & Dawn.
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