Fusion Projects - Garrett Anderson Centre:Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust

Garrett Anderson Centre - The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust

Lead Consultants : Geof Beesley; Consortium Advisor: Virginia de Vere

The recently opened Garrett Anderson Centre is perhaps unique in that the lead health planner for the Trust and the lead health planner for the successful bidding Consortium, are now working together and so are able to bring the experiences and knowledge gained from opposite sides of the spectrum for the same project.

Virginia de Vere acted for Prospect Health, interpreting the clinical specifications developed by Geof Beesley as the lead health planner for The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust and so setting the clinical design solution for the Consortium´s design team to develop.

The project consisted of a new critical care centre (25 beds), a 40 bedded short stay surgery ward, 4 theatre day surgery complex and a new acute emergency centre. The overall project capital value was set at £25m.

It was clear from the outset that the Prospect Team, headed by Virginia grasped the ethos, essence and practical needs of the project and returned a clinical design solution which was very "workable" and an almost perfect reflection of the arrangements that the Trust´s health planning process called for.

It is the experience of delivering simultaneously as Trust advisor and Consortia advisor on a single successful PFI project (the project reached "preferred bidder" status and achieved Financial Close on programme) that Fusion Health LLP are able to bring to any PPP/PFI or indeed any other competitively procured health project. Fusion Health LLP know how Consortia think, the questions they want to ask and the way that NHS organisations often perceive bidding organisations.

The Garrett Anderson Centre project allows Fusion Health LLP to deliver the experience gained from being "game keeper" and poacher" to the benefit of North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust.