Planning is well underway for the Nelson Hospital upgrade, with Health Minister Andrew Little checking out concept plans for the redevelopment in Nelson last Friday.
At the start of 2021, Minister Little said any Nelson Hospital building would be “commenced before the end of this term of Parliament,” and he says that is still the case.
Nelson mayoral candidate and former Nelson MP Nick Smith says he has heard from “multiple sources” that the project has already fallen behind schedule and there is “no chance” of work commencing before October next year – the end of the parliamentary term.
Andrew says that’s not the case.
“It’s due to go to the subcommittee of the board of Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand next month. It’s on track as much as it could possibly be,” he says.
“I am advised that there are delays in design, changes in the capital investment approval system of Health NZ, and that the most optimistic programme is tenders for the construction being called in 2023 and work commencing in 2024,” Nick says.
In January 2020, the Nelson City Council issued earthquake-prone building notices for two of the hospital buildings; the George Manson building, and the Percy Brunette building. Seismic work is required to be carried out by November 2028.
The George Manson building met just 22 per cent of the building code so was deemed a priority. Later in 2020, a government stocktake found the George Manson building to be among the worst in the country.
Nelson MP Rachel Boyack says it’s important, when looking at Nelson Hospital as a priority, to go back to that stocktake – the Capital Management Analysis.
“That put Nelson at the top of the list, the analysis is there that Nelson absolutely has priority alongside a couple of other builds.”
When asked if there was risk that sky-rocketing construction costs might delay or diminish the capacity of the rebuild, Andrew said that increased costs had already been taken into account.
“No, we have factored in that even projects that are already under way are going to be well adrift in terms of initial cost, we have factored in the likelihood of cost escalation,” he says.
A rough costing of $713m was spoken about when the announcement of funding was first made It was part of a wider $1.3b in capital funding.
While he says a final costing won’t be known until a final plan has been approved, he is confident that the rebuild will commence as planned.
“The detailed business case will go to committee and there might be a little bit of toing-and-froing.”
He says toing-and-froing will involve deciding whether a particular thing is needed in a particular place, “those sorts of things”.
“The fact that we’re down to the detailed business case means there’s already been a lot decided.”
Aspects that are already decided are things like the fact that there will be new ed space for example, he says.
The land on which the new buildings will be built have been set aside or allocated.
Rachel says George Manson will need to come down.
“They may retain the bottom floor or two, but it’s not a building that can have remediation.”
Percy Brunette will be refurbished and repurposed once the new building can be used, she says.
