IN Brief:
- Eiffage has secured around €132m of construction work across major hospital programmes in Angers and Avallon.
- The Angers packages combine structural, envelope, ventilation, and electrical work on a 38,400 sq m medical-technical building.
- Avallon is intended to become France’s first RE2020-compliant hospital, using low-carbon concrete, bio-based insulation, and rooftop photovoltaics.
Eiffage has secured healthcare construction contracts worth €132m across two French hospital programmes, with major works at Angers University Hospital and the design-and-build of a new hospital in Avallon. The awards bring together structural construction, envelope and fit-out work, ventilation, electrical systems, roads and utilities, and low-carbon materials across projects at different delivery stages.
At Angers, Eiffage Construction has been selected for the main structural works, building envelope, and finishing package on the first phase of the Convergences programme. Eiffage Énergie Systèmes will deliver ventilation and both power and low-voltage electrical installations. The combined Angers contracts are worth close to €109m and apply to a five-storey, 38,400 sq m medical-technical building.
The new building will accommodate emergency services, operating theatres, imaging, and adult critical-care units. Construction began in July 2026, with completion scheduled for late 2029. The project is targeting HQE Excellent certification and the E+C Level 3 label, with bioclimatic design and renewable energy production included in the wider specification.
Angers is part of the broader Convergences programme at CHU Angers, where the hospital is reorganising medical and technical functions across a live campus. That operational setting affects access, logistics, sequencing, temporary arrangements, and commissioning because clinical services must continue while new facilities are built and connected.
Different hospitals, different delivery constraints
The Avallon contract is smaller but technically distinct. Eiffage Construction has been appointed lead contractor for the consortium designing and building the 9,676 sq m hospital, with the overall contract valued at nearly €31m and Eiffage’s share at €23.5m. BSA Architecte, Edeis, Ingénieurs associés, Amstein + Walthert, and landscape designer Rocher Rouge form part of the consortium.
Other Eiffage businesses will provide roads and utilities, low-voltage systems, and sanitary modules. The building is intended to become the first hospital in France to comply with RE2020 regulations, using low-carbon concrete, bio-based insulation, and rooftop photovoltaic generation. Design work is under way, with construction due to start at the end of the first quarter of 2027 and completion planned for late 2028.
Those environmental requirements sit alongside the normal technical demands of healthcare construction. Hospitals need resilient electrical distribution, tightly controlled ventilation, complex servicing routes, infection-control measures, and dependable commissioning across spaces that can carry very different operational requirements. Material and energy choices therefore have to be resolved with structure and building services rather than treated as separate sustainability packages.
At Angers, the Eiffage scope places several of those interfaces inside the same delivery group. The structural and envelope packages must progress in step with ventilation and electrical installation, while plant areas, service risers, ceiling zones, penetrations, and maintenance access need to be coordinated before finishes close the building. Changes late in the programme can affect multiple disciplines at once.
Avallon brings a different challenge because RE2020 compliance depends on the interaction between fabric, systems, energy use, and carbon impact. Low-carbon concrete still has to achieve the required structural performance and programme, while bio-based insulation must satisfy fire, moisture, durability, and installation requirements. Rooftop photovoltaics add further interfaces around structure, waterproofing, electrical distribution, access, and maintenance.
The design-and-build route gives Eiffage and its partners an opportunity to resolve those issues before the site phase begins. Early coordination can reduce clashes between architecture, structure, services, and specialist healthcare requirements, but it also requires design decisions to mature early enough for procurement. That is particularly important where lower-impact materials or specialist systems have limited suppliers or longer lead times.
Construction on a live hospital campus creates less tolerance for programme drift than many commercial schemes. Deliveries, noisy work, temporary closures, fire routes, and commissioning activities have to be managed around patients and staff, while cutovers to new services can require tightly controlled windows. At Angers, the site team has already had to adapt access and circulation as the construction footprint grows.
The €132m combined award therefore places Eiffage across structural construction, building services, and environmental performance on healthcare schemes where the finished buildings have to meet demanding operational requirements from the day they are commissioned. Those disciplines cannot be separated cleanly once construction is under way, which places greater weight on coordination before individual packages reach site.
Angers has already entered the main construction phase, while Avallon remains in design for several more months. The two programmes will test whether early coordination between structure, services, low-carbon materials, and clinical requirements can hold through procurement and site delivery. With completion dates in 2028 and 2029, the immediate work is less about headline sustainability targets than turning those targets into details that contractors can build, test, and maintain.
