IN Brief:
- Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust has awarded AECOM a £1.389m project-management commission.
- The initial scope covers a RIBA Stage 1 revisit and Stage 2 design work for the New Hospital Programme scheme.
- The commission links the new acute hospital with a Heatherwood Hospital extension and refurbishment of retained Frimley Park buildings.
AECOM has been appointed to provide project management services for the New Frimley Park Hospital programme under a £1.389m commission awarded by Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust.
The appointment covers three connected strands of development: the proposed replacement acute hospital, an extension at Heatherwood Hospital and refurbishment of buildings that will remain on the existing Frimley Park estate. The programme therefore combines new construction with work across operational healthcare buildings rather than treating the replacement hospital as an isolated project.
AECOM was appointed through Lot 2 of the NHS Shared Business Services Healthcare Planning, Construction Consultancy and Ancillary Services framework following a further competition among eligible suppliers.
The initial contractual scope includes a revisit of RIBA Stage 1 and delivery through RIBA Stage 2. Procurement documents also describe project management through RIBA Stage 3 and provide an option for the trust to extend the commission into RIBA Stages 4 and 5 using agreed day rates.
Stage 2 is where the concept design and principal engineering strategy develop sufficiently to test the brief against the site, budget and programme. For a hospital, decisions at that point extend well beyond the external form of the building because clinical adjacencies, plant space, servicing routes and resilience requirements can determine structural grids, floor depths and internal layouts.
The commission also covers work associated with a hybrid outline planning application. Planning material, clinical requirements, design development, infrastructure and retained-estate work therefore need to progress on compatible programmes if the scheme is to reach later design stages without reopening fundamental assumptions.
Frimley Park must continue operating while the replacement programme develops. Existing acute services cannot simply stop until a new building is completed, so the trust has to coordinate new construction with continued use of buildings, roads, utilities and clinical areas across the current estate.
The retained buildings create a different engineering problem from the new hospital. Existing structures and services may have been altered repeatedly during decades of operation, making surveys, record verification and intrusive investigation important before detailed refurbishment design can be fixed.
Frimley Park is among the NHS estates affected by reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, with separate intervention work already required across parts of the hospital. Replacement through the New Hospital Programme is intended to address wider structural, operational and capacity constraints rather than rely indefinitely on incremental repairs.
The Heatherwood extension introduces another site into the programme. Project controls must therefore coordinate activities that take place at different locations but affect the same trust-wide clinical and operational plan.
Hospital briefing carries heavy consequences for building services. Medical gases, ventilation, electrical resilience, data, nurse call systems and specialist clinical equipment can require dedicated routes and plant capacity, while departments have to be arranged around patient, staff, supply and waste flows.
Changes to those requirements become progressively harder to absorb as design advances. Moving a department after risers, structural grids or major plant areas have been coordinated can affect several other disciplines, making information management and change control central to the project-management role.
The same applies to programme sequencing. Enabling works may depend on clinical departments moving elsewhere, while new services may have to be installed and commissioned before existing infrastructure can be disconnected. A construction programme that ignores those operational dependencies can be physically buildable yet impossible for the hospital to implement safely.
Completion of the building will also precede full clinical occupation. Hospitals require extensive commissioning of electrical resilience, fire systems, ventilation, water, medical gases, communications and specialist equipment before departments can move in.
The transfer itself is a programme activity. Beds, diagnostic equipment, pharmacy stock, records and clinical teams have to move while emergency and inpatient services continue operating, placing a substantial operational phase between construction completion and normal use.
AECOM’s current appointment gives the trust continuity through the early design and programme stages, with later work available through contractual options rather than automatically committed at award.
The contract was awarded on 30 September and published on 2 October. Attention now moves to the coordination of the three development strands as the trust advances design, planning and programme work towards the point at which the replacement hospital can enter detailed procurement and construction.
