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BeaconMedaes completes its ‘longest and largest’ MGPS project to date
BeaconMedaes has recently completed the longest and largest medical gas pipeline system project in its 65+ year history. Its ‘turnkey solution’ for the new Midland Metropolitan University Hospital (MMUH) in Smethwick brought together design, products, installation, commissioning, and service. Part of the New Hospital Programme, the MMUH is one of the largest hospitals to open in the UK in the last decade, and BeaconMedaes’s eight-year spell there saw it progress from design through to delivery of the ‘vast and complex’ MGPS required. The MMUH has 736 beds, an Emergency Department, a children’s A&E and assessment unit, separate adult and children’s wards, a midwife-led birthing unit, and a sickle cell and thalassaemia centre. It also has 11 theatres for emergency, major and planned surgery, and two maternity theatres.
BeaconMedaes was brought in to develop the MGPS design in 2016. Building work was delayed due to a change of construction company, but when it resumed, BeaconMedaes went back to the original plan
Improving the NHS capital regime
A new report from the NHS Confederation sets out how the NHS capital regime can be improved ‘to deliver on the government’s missions for health and economic growth’.
Capital efficiency – how
drawings, which had already been significantly adapted with the Trust and the Project team. The MGPS was developed in line with the Trust Contract Requirements (TCR) for a whole new hospital system. Works were retendered against the TCR with other medical gas installers, and again BeaconMedaes was successful. The MGPS was further developed with Balfour Beatty to ensure HTM compliance. In March 2020, a few months after
construction work had recommenced, the COVID-19 lockdowns began. Operating under COVID restrictions, BeaconMedaes and its sub- contractor, M&M Medical, continued to work alongside Balfour Beatty and other services. On 6 October 2024, MMUH opened to patients. BeaconMedaes successfully met a complex brief for the medical gas pipeline to cover the new hospital’s huge infrastructure, providing all the source equipment, apart from the oxygen tanks.
A ‘more open’ public procurement regime announced
New laws putting growth, small businesses, and transparency, ‘at the heart of public contract awards’ are now in force as part of ‘a transformation’ of the government’s commercial landscape that delivers on its Plan for Change. The Cabinet Office says ‘a
more open public procurement regime driving value for money’ is now in place through the Procurement Act 2023, which sets rules all public bodies must follow when buying goods and services. The Cabinet Office said: “The Act will boost growth by slashing red tape for small and medium-sized businesses applying for government contracts – combining multiple regulations into one simple set, and publishing procurement data in a standard,
18 Health Estate Journal April 2025
processes that drive innovation, offering greater flexibility for buyers to tailor procurement to their exact needs’; for example, providing public bodies with more opportunities to negotiate with suppliers, and using built-in stages to procurement cycles such as demonstrations and testing prototypes.
open format on a Central Digital Platform.” The legislation is also intended to ‘end late payments that put small businesses at risk’, introducing a mandate of 30-day payment terms for all public sector contracts. The Cabinet Office says costs for both business and the public sector will be reduced ‘through simple new
Cabinet Office Minister, Georgia Gould (pictured), said: “Public sector procurement can now fully deliver on the Plan for Change. The Procurement Act, supported by our new National Procurement Policy Statement, will tear down barriers that stop small businesses from winning government work, giving them greater opportunity to access the £400 bn spent on public procurement every year, investing in home-grown talent, and driving innovation and growth.”
to reform healthcare capital spending says the NHS is ‘being held back’ from most effectively spending the investment it has been given to repair its estates, purchase vital equipment, and build new facilities, due to ‘bureaucratic hurdles’ that are ‘slow, unclear, and duplicative’. The Confederation says local NHS leaders have told it capital approvals processes – from local Trust and Integrated Care Boards, up through NHS England, the Department of Health and Social Care, and the Treasury, are ‘too slow, as there are too many duplicative stages, creating delay and adding cost’. The report recommends
reducing the number of approval stages for projects – currently at least 19 – and giving local health systems greater autonomy over their spending. For example, NHSE and the government must both approve any investments over £50 m, but the Confederation believes this should rise to £100 m. ICBs should also be allowed to raise additional investment away from government allocations, including via private means, which is not currently allowed, the report argues.
NHS Confederation CEO,
Matthew Taylor (pictured), said: “Across the NHS, staff are having to treat patients in crumbling buildings, and with out-of-date equipment. What money there is is too often held back by red tape – creating delay and cost, and undermining taxpayers’ value for money. Our new report sets out 16 measures that can help the NHS make the most effective use of the capital funding it already has.”
Image used courtesy of Creative Commons 3.0 Unported
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