IN Brief:
- Sir Robert McAlpine has appointed Simon Kydd as health sector managing director.
- Kydd brings more than 20 years of healthcare construction and consultancy experience.
- The appointment comes as the New Hospital Programme and Hospital 2.0 delivery model move further into procurement and delivery planning.
Sir Robert McAlpine has appointed Simon Kydd as health sector managing director, strengthening its leadership around the UK healthcare construction pipeline.
Kydd replaces Stuart McArthur, who is stepping down after 10 years helping to build Sir Robert McAlpine’s healthcare operation and its Integrated Health Projects joint venture with Vinci Building.
Kydd brings more than 20 years of healthcare sector experience. He previously spent three years at Wates as director of health and education, following almost eight years as UK head of healthcare at WSP. Earlier in his career, he worked at Balfour Beatty, where he became head of healthcare market development.
The appointment comes as the government’s New Hospital Programme moves further into delivery planning. The programme is prioritising reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete-affected estates in its first wave, with standardised Hospital 2.0 designs intended to reduce repetition, improve consistency, and support delivery certainty across major hospital projects.
Sir Robert McAlpine’s IHP joint venture with Vinci Building is lined up to deliver the redevelopment of Leighton Hospital in Crewe, one of the first-wave schemes replacing a RAAC-affected hospital built in the 1970s. The contractor and IHP have also secured a place in the Hospital 2.0 Alliance.
Healthcare construction is becoming one of the UK’s most important building pipelines, while remaining one of its most demanding. Projects must balance clinical continuity, infection control, decanting, estates strategy, complex MEP systems, digital infrastructure, resilience, and public accountability. Where RAAC replacement is involved, programme urgency adds further pressure.
The first £14bn wave of the New Hospital Programme has already aligned major contractors with schemes where existing buildings cannot safely operate beyond 2030. That wave moves the programme from policy and procurement structure towards the practical question of who can deliver complex health estates at pace.
The Hospital 2.0 Alliance also brings major construction partners into the standardised hospital building strategy. Standardisation is intended to reduce bespoke design and improve repeatability, but hospital buildings still need to work clinically, technically, and operationally once built.
For contractors, healthcare leadership is now a strategic delivery role rather than a market-facing title. Securing work depends on understanding NHS estates pressure, repeatable design, modern methods of construction, building services complexity, clinical adjacencies, and the realities of working on constrained live hospital sites.
The wider market position adds further weight to the appointment. Healthcare offers long-term public-sector demand at a time when parts of private construction remain subdued, but hospital work cannot be treated as simple replacement volume. These schemes carry heavy technical risk, long stakeholder chains, strict compliance requirements, and intense scrutiny over cost and progress.
The move towards Hospital 2.0 may help by creating repeatable design components and clearer procurement expectations. It may also raise expectations on contractors, because repeatability depends on consistent delivery discipline across multiple sites rather than strong performance on a single flagship project.
Sir Robert McAlpine’s appointment of Kydd gives the business a dedicated healthcare lead with experience across contracting, consultancy, and market development. That blend will be important as hospital projects move from alliance structures and early planning into the detailed delivery phase, where design maturity, supply chain capacity, and site execution will determine whether standardised delivery can produce faster results.
