Supply to the Super Hospital

Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust is building a new 'Super Hospital' on Grove Lane in Smethwick - and this is your chance to find out how your company could supply goods or services to the project.

The NHS Trust is teaming up alongside partners Birmingham City Council and Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council to organise a huge supply chain engagement day on Friday 8 October and help you take advantage of the business opportunities stemming from this groundbreaking development.

At the all-day event, to be held in the chamber annexes at Sandwell Council House in Oldbury, you'll hear from hospital chiefs and project director Graham Seager about opportunities, events and timescales leading up to the opening of the hospital in 2016.

The blueprint for the development shows a 17-acre site designed to provide patients in the area with the best facilities in the country.

When the plans were approved, Graham Seager said the scheme represented the next generation of hospital design: "As the newest and greenest scheme of its kind, this will undoubtedly be the best in the country."

He said a focus of the plans was to minimise the distances between key departments to improve patient care. There will also be a separation between patient, service and business flows to improve patient dignity and safety.

"Typically in hospitals you will walk in and maybe see patients being wheeled around on their beds while other staff are carrying bin bags full of waste around. You would never see that in a hotel and we don't think you should have to put up with it in hospital."

At least half of the beds in the new site will be in single en-suite rooms, which will also help improve the privacy and dignity afforded to patients.

"This kind of thing is also vital to combating infections such as MRSA. Flexibility will also be key and a lot of the wards will be generic rather than customised in order to allow that."

He said an underground car park, which will lead up to a dramatic shopping centre-style foyer, will also improve the experiences of patients.

"Most people who come into hospital are poorly and frightened and they just want to feel comfortable," he said. "The underground car park will mean people will not have to be exposed to the elements, which is the last thing you want when you are not feeling well."

Stuart Horton, the finditinbirmingham.com project manager, said that the region's firms wishing to supply to the hospital would need to be innovative and creative.

"The client (NHS) wants to see sustainable, environmentally friendly products: we are challenging our supply chain to design and make solutions that lead to buildings which are zero carbon from the word 'go'.

"There is a real opportunity to innovate here. Another example of this is that people are getting bigger - almost a quarter of UK adults are now classed as obese - and the new hospital equipment will need to provide solutions to meet this changing context of health. We're really confident that local firms have the talent, creativity and engineering skills to meet these needs."

The new hospital development is set to be unique for another reason: this is the first time Birmingham City Council and Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council have engaged so closely with the NHS in making sure its local economy benefits from such a huge project.

In terms of procurement, this development will take a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) approach. The Trust will be undertaking a competitive dialogue process with large fund and build-consortia bidders, in line with procurement law. If you'd like to supply to the Super Hospital, these are the organisations you will need to win contracts from. And as the Trust is keen to find ways of linking local companies with the bidders for the PFI contract, this is your opportunity to be involved from the beginning.

In addition to working with us to organise the event in October, Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust has agreed that all of the work packages will be advertised through its own procurement page on finditinsandwell and finditinbirmingham. The Trust's project team will be engaging with our soon-to-be-launched Innovation Zone - posting up 'problems' or queries so that innovators can respond with fitting solutions. Procurement staff from the NHS estates management team have been attending our Construction Commitments-awareness training held throughout July.

The supply chain engagement day takes place on Friday 8 October 2010 in the council chambers of Sandwell Council House (Freeth Street, Oldbury B69 3DE) - 10.00 - 14:00.

To sign-up to attend, visit our events page. Alternatively, you can contact Steve Massey on 0121 569 2105 or Stuart Horton on 0121 303 0005 - or email stephen_massey@sandwell.gov.uk or stuart.horton@birmingham.gov.uk.