Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust has begun seeking a long-term construction partner for a £30m programme to refurbish wards across five London hospitals.
The trust wants a procurement arrangement that could provide contractors with a continuous pipeline of work, potentially including a permanent presence on its hospital sites.
It has launched a market engagement exercise ahead of a planned tender in January 2027, with work expected to begin in June.
The procurement notice says the trust wants to facilitate a permanent contractor presence on site, “although this will not be guaranteed”.
The programme covers Guy’s Hospital, St Thomas’ Hospital, Evelina London Children’s Hospital, Royal Brompton Hospital and Harefield Hospital, as well as associated community sites.
The proposed contract would run for five years, with an option to extend it by a further two years to May 2034.
The trust said it wanted to establish a flexible arrangement allowing contractors to undertake projects of different sizes, while potentially extending the scope to other clinical refurbishment works.
These could include general ward modernisation, ventilation upgrades, fire safety improvements and work requiring Gateway 2 approval under the Building Safety Act.
Contractors may also be required to integrate new works with existing medical gas supplies, nurse-call systems, building management systems and other hospital infrastructure.
The trust said the precise scope of individual projects would be determined through surveys, risk assessments and cost modelling, with investment prioritised according to clinical, infrastructure and statutory risks.
Specialist works involving operating theatres, catheterisation laboratories and major medical equipment programmes would be procured separately.
The programme is already progressing through design work on three wards.
Arcadis was awarded a £160,000 project management contract in July covering Albert and Somerset wards at St Thomas’ Hospital and Samaritan ward at Guy’s Hospital.
Architect Hunters has also secured a £290,000 appointment covering the three wards, while Rider Levett Bucknall was awarded a £75,000 quantity surveying contract for the wider programme.
Separately, the trust has launched market engagement for a £5m professional services and consultancy contract to support the refurbishment programme.
An earlier procurement notice, published in May, indicated that the trust was considering refurbishing more than 10 wards over six to seven years, although it stressed that the plans were provisional.
Contractors have until 30 November to respond to the latest market engagement exercise.
