News - Midlands
In good health
Anyone travelling in the vicinity of Edgbaston recently cannot fail to have noticed the giant cranes that have emerged on its horizon.
Giant being the operative word, for these beasts - rumoured to be among the largest in the UK - are laying the foundations for one of the tallest and largest structures anywhere in the Midlands, the new £3545m "super-hospital" serving Birmingham.
To be more specific, the cranes themselves are laying the groundwork for three giant elliptic buildings that will dwarf the site and house the new hospital wards and more than 1,200 beds.
I'm told that the steel going into these monoliths would stretch for more than 50km.
This is just one of the hundreds of statistics that Julie Moore, acting chief executive of University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, throws out during an interview from her office overlooking the giant construction site. The woman is actually a veritable mine of information, completely on top of her brief, capable of reeling out facts, figures and statistics about the hospital and the NHS itself at a mind-numbing rate.
And, before you ask, her background isn't even in number-crunching.
In fact she began life as a nurse - and indeed stresses to me that at heart she is still very much one too.
So just how did she come to be in charge of Birmingham's biggest building project then, and more to the point, why? Moore is reluctant to focus on herself during our chat, but in a rare moment does open up to explain. "When you are a nurse you think about how you can make things better.
I know that I can make things better now for more people by doing this job rather than by being a sister on a ward," she says. "It frustrates me the environment that patients are in at this hospital.
But I know that the results from this project are long term and will benefit thousands of patients." Moore has found herself temporarily in charge of the whole project following the surprise departure last month of Trust chief executive Mark Britnell who has left to become chief executive of the South Central Strategic Health Authority.
The recruitment process for Britnell's replacement is underway and Moore has naturally put her own hat in the ring.
Until that process is finalised she will continue to drive the project that only received final sign off from the Treasury back in June 2006. It had been a long road to reach that deal too, with the scheme bouncing back and forth between Whitehall and Birmingham over a number of years.
At one point the deal seemed it might even be a casualty of wider overspending in the NHS, while it was also further complicated when the Queen Elizabeth (QE) became a Foundation Hospital two years ago. "There were all kinds of holes that needed to be filled in from a legal perspective because as a foundation hospital we are not strictly accountable to the government but to our membership of staff and patients," says Moore.
However, Moore is full of praise for the benefits that foundation status now brings. "It allows us to be far more entrepreneurial," she says. "For instance we can carry over surpluses from one year to the next, which has big advantages, while we are also allowed to raise capital on the markets too." So far at least the QE has also avoided the budgetary crisis that has afflicted so many NHS trusts that have been forced to make job cuts. "Our waiting times are also among the shortest in the country," she adds.
Now that the PFI deal has been signed and sealed Moore stresses that there is no room for slippage. "We have a very tight project plan and there is a pretty rigid timetable," she says.
Building the new hospital is Consort Healthcare, which is involved with a string of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) deals across the country in Manchester, Blackburn, Edinburgh, Durham and Pontefract.
But the Birmingham scheme is by far the largest, with partners in the consortium including Balfour Beatty, Royal Bank of Scotland and architect firm BDP.
Moore adds that even the slightest variation to design will now have to receive full board approval. "In terms of the cost of the project there is no scope for any variation," she says. "Nothing can be changed.
However, we have tried to future proof the building so that we can adapt to any changes that are required.
For instance if you take the operating theatres we will incorporate flexibility into them so that we can swap between different requirements." The aim is to start moving patients into the new building in late 2009. "It will be a huge logistical challenge and it will take 18 months to move everything across," she adds.
The patients themselves will come from Selly Oak, which will close, and from other older wards on the QE site, which will close down and may be taken by the neighbouring university.
Moore adds: "Selly Oak doesn't fit with the plans at all although we may leave a few things there.
It is a prime 40-acre brownfield site and I suppose the favourite is that it will go for housing." Reports suggest the site could be worth up to £370m for the hospital's coffers.
Beyond the modern ward and operating facilities, a big teaching and research centre forms a key part of the wider plans.
In particular Moore is looking at setting up a translational research facility offering laboratory facilities for spin-out companies, companies probably most likely to spin out of the neighbouring Birmingham University, though not necessarily. "If you take just one area, gene therapy pioneered at the university is already being used here," she says. "This is something that has great potential looking ahead." The vision also chimes with wider plans for the South Birmingham technology corridor along the A38.
This leads to a wider debate about what the new hospital will mean for the city. "People keep telling me that infrastructure is more about the right people meeting each other and bumping into each other and I think we'll see that with this new hospital," says Moore. "We need to be a hi-tech city, indeed the university itself is focusing more on its science capability particularly now that Birmingham has been given science city status.
If you are a science city you will attract people here. We want to be more in tune with the wider goals of the city. We want to play our part in Birmingham's future. This isn't just a new hospital."
The point is driven home all the more by the fact that Moore runs a £3371m-turnover business with 7,000 staff. It's also driven home by the sheer ambition and scale of the project. After the interview I am taken on a guided tour of the site and am shown video images of how the foyer of the new building will look. It is more like the entrance to a five-star hotel than a hospital.
I cannot go without a final political question for Moore. For instance, won't the wider public think this whole project is rather extravagant when trusts up and down the country are cutting jobs? Moore gives a diplomatic answer. "Ultimately you have to say that this government has invested in health," she says. "They have also had the nerve to change things when they have needed changing and had the honesty to change things when they are not working.
However, we do need a period of stability to bed everything down now."
Giant being the operative word, for these beasts - rumoured to be among the largest in the UK - are laying the foundations for one of the tallest and largest structures anywhere in the Midlands, the new £3545m "super-hospital" serving Birmingham.
To be more specific, the cranes themselves are laying the groundwork for three giant elliptic buildings that will dwarf the site and house the new hospital wards and more than 1,200 beds.
I'm told that the steel going into these monoliths would stretch for more than 50km.
This is just one of the hundreds of statistics that Julie Moore, acting chief executive of University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, throws out during an interview from her office overlooking the giant construction site. The woman is actually a veritable mine of information, completely on top of her brief, capable of reeling out facts, figures and statistics about the hospital and the NHS itself at a mind-numbing rate.
And, before you ask, her background isn't even in number-crunching.
In fact she began life as a nurse - and indeed stresses to me that at heart she is still very much one too.
So just how did she come to be in charge of Birmingham's biggest building project then, and more to the point, why? Moore is reluctant to focus on herself during our chat, but in a rare moment does open up to explain. "When you are a nurse you think about how you can make things better.
I know that I can make things better now for more people by doing this job rather than by being a sister on a ward," she says. "It frustrates me the environment that patients are in at this hospital.
But I know that the results from this project are long term and will benefit thousands of patients." Moore has found herself temporarily in charge of the whole project following the surprise departure last month of Trust chief executive Mark Britnell who has left to become chief executive of the South Central Strategic Health Authority.
The recruitment process for Britnell's replacement is underway and Moore has naturally put her own hat in the ring.
Until that process is finalised she will continue to drive the project that only received final sign off from the Treasury back in June 2006. It had been a long road to reach that deal too, with the scheme bouncing back and forth between Whitehall and Birmingham over a number of years.
At one point the deal seemed it might even be a casualty of wider overspending in the NHS, while it was also further complicated when the Queen Elizabeth (QE) became a Foundation Hospital two years ago. "There were all kinds of holes that needed to be filled in from a legal perspective because as a foundation hospital we are not strictly accountable to the government but to our membership of staff and patients," says Moore.
However, Moore is full of praise for the benefits that foundation status now brings. "It allows us to be far more entrepreneurial," she says. "For instance we can carry over surpluses from one year to the next, which has big advantages, while we are also allowed to raise capital on the markets too." So far at least the QE has also avoided the budgetary crisis that has afflicted so many NHS trusts that have been forced to make job cuts. "Our waiting times are also among the shortest in the country," she adds.
Now that the PFI deal has been signed and sealed Moore stresses that there is no room for slippage. "We have a very tight project plan and there is a pretty rigid timetable," she says.
Building the new hospital is Consort Healthcare, which is involved with a string of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) deals across the country in Manchester, Blackburn, Edinburgh, Durham and Pontefract.
But the Birmingham scheme is by far the largest, with partners in the consortium including Balfour Beatty, Royal Bank of Scotland and architect firm BDP.
Moore adds that even the slightest variation to design will now have to receive full board approval. "In terms of the cost of the project there is no scope for any variation," she says. "Nothing can be changed.
However, we have tried to future proof the building so that we can adapt to any changes that are required.
For instance if you take the operating theatres we will incorporate flexibility into them so that we can swap between different requirements." The aim is to start moving patients into the new building in late 2009. "It will be a huge logistical challenge and it will take 18 months to move everything across," she adds.
The patients themselves will come from Selly Oak, which will close, and from other older wards on the QE site, which will close down and may be taken by the neighbouring university.
Moore adds: "Selly Oak doesn't fit with the plans at all although we may leave a few things there.
It is a prime 40-acre brownfield site and I suppose the favourite is that it will go for housing." Reports suggest the site could be worth up to £370m for the hospital's coffers.
Beyond the modern ward and operating facilities, a big teaching and research centre forms a key part of the wider plans.
In particular Moore is looking at setting up a translational research facility offering laboratory facilities for spin-out companies, companies probably most likely to spin out of the neighbouring Birmingham University, though not necessarily. "If you take just one area, gene therapy pioneered at the university is already being used here," she says. "This is something that has great potential looking ahead." The vision also chimes with wider plans for the South Birmingham technology corridor along the A38.
This leads to a wider debate about what the new hospital will mean for the city. "People keep telling me that infrastructure is more about the right people meeting each other and bumping into each other and I think we'll see that with this new hospital," says Moore. "We need to be a hi-tech city, indeed the university itself is focusing more on its science capability particularly now that Birmingham has been given science city status.
If you are a science city you will attract people here. We want to be more in tune with the wider goals of the city. We want to play our part in Birmingham's future. This isn't just a new hospital."
The point is driven home all the more by the fact that Moore runs a £3371m-turnover business with 7,000 staff. It's also driven home by the sheer ambition and scale of the project. After the interview I am taken on a guided tour of the site and am shown video images of how the foyer of the new building will look. It is more like the entrance to a five-star hotel than a hospital.
I cannot go without a final political question for Moore. For instance, won't the wider public think this whole project is rather extravagant when trusts up and down the country are cutting jobs? Moore gives a diplomatic answer. "Ultimately you have to say that this government has invested in health," she says. "They have also had the nerve to change things when they have needed changing and had the honesty to change things when they are not working.
However, we do need a period of stability to bed everything down now."