Western Australia’s Health Minister Kim Hames has admitted he is “nervous” about whether the new Perth Children’s Hospital will be completed on time, despite the Government previously saying it believes the facility will be built to schedule.
The $1.2 billion hospital is forecast to open by the end of April next year after a five-month commissioning process.
Before that, the project is due to be handed over to the State Government by November 30, with construction having so far been ahead of schedule.
But Dr Hames said a change in ownership of contractor John Holland, combined with a State Government decision to reconfigure wards to add more beds, meant he could not say exactly when the hospital would be finished.
“It was well ahead of schedule, and now they’re saying it’s still on schedule, but there’s still a lot of work to be done in the hospital to finish off,” he said.
“I can’t pick a time because the company are still, as late as last week, reassuring us that the 30th of November time is the completion date.
“It think it will become a lot more clear over the next month when they’re doing a lot of work in the hospital, when we can see, for sure, that they’re able to complete on the time that they’ve said they can.”
The Government redesigned the hospital floor plan in late 2013 to incorporate an additional 24-bed surgical ward.
Dr Hames said he believed those additional beds were needed, and the reconfiguration would not be the cause of any delay.
“If we had designed those additional 24 beds in [the hospital], would that have made them faster? Look, I think its a marginal difference,” he said.
“We certainly gave them plenty of time to be able to put that into the design.”
Dr Hames said the opening of the hospital would be delayed if construction was not completed by November 30.
He said after the experience of Fiona Stanley Hospital, the Government was not going to rush the commissioning process.
“That’s our job and we’ve said we’re going to take five months. Whatever time we get the keys, we’ll take five months from that date,” Dr Hames said.
Acting Opposition health spokesman Chris Tallentire blamed the Health Minister for the possible delay.
“It is all very well to point the finger at a contractor, when here we’ve got a situation where … ministerial oversight is missing,” he said.
However, Mr Tallentire was unable to provide an example of any specific omission by Dr Hames that had contributed to the potential delay.
Dr Hames said senior ministerial and departmental staff regularly met with contractor John Holland to check progress with the project.