A new chapter for healthcare in the West Country
The New Hospital Programme’s Hospital 2.0 Alliance has moved from procurement into delivery. Graham Dundas, Chief Executive Officer, on what that means for Cornwall and the way this country builds.
Picture: Looking to the future - CEO Graham Dundas with the minister of state for Health, Karin Smyth, and Ian Dean, CFO at Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust
Willmott Dixon has been appointed by Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust (RCHT) as its construction partner for the new Women and Children's Hospital in Truro, following the signing of contracts that establish the New Hospital Programme's Hospital 2.0 Alliance.
The appointment is one of 11 partnerships confirmed across Wave 1 of the New Hospital Programme and marks the point at which the programme moves from procurement into delivery. Contracts have now been executed across all 11 Wave 1 schemes, five months after the Alliance was established.
The new hospital will bring acute maternity, neonatal, paediatric, obstetric and gynaecology services together in a single, purpose-built and digitally enabled facility serving families across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. It will include a new neonatal unit designed to help families stay together, dedicated paediatric accommodation and assessment facilities, a midwife-led birthing centre, and bereavement and safeguarding suites.
RCHT has developed its clinical vision over several years, appointed a multi-disciplinary design team and produced designs that adopt the Hospital 2.0 standard. Willmott Dixon joins the scheme at Stage 0, the early contractor involvement phase, to build on that work.
What happens next
Stage 0 begins a collaborative period of familiarisation, design development and delivery planning with the Trust and its team. Working alongside RCHT's programme team, its clinicians, its consultants and the national New Hospital Programme, Willmott Dixon will build a shared understanding of scope, programme and constraints, review buildability, identify risks and opportunities, and help shape the procurement and delivery strategy.
Sequencing, logistics, access, temporary arrangements and enabling works will be an early focus. RCHT must continue providing care throughout construction on a live acute hospital campus, and decisions taken at Stage 0 will shape how effectively service continuity is maintained for patients, staff and visitors.
Graham Dundas, chief executive officer at Willmott Dixon:
“This is confirmation of something we have been working towards for months. Cornwall is a rural peninsula served by a single acute provider, and distance matters here in a way it does not elsewhere. For a family in the far west of the county, a hospital designed properly around them makes a real difference. What strikes me about RCHT's ambition is that it reaches beyond the clinical brief. They want this building to be a source of civic pride and to make a genuine contribution to Cornwall's long-term economic and social prosperity. That is exactly the kind of brief we want to be handed.”
The Hospital 2.0 Alliance
The Alliance brings NHS trusts, construction partners, designers and the wider supply chain together within a single structure alongside the New Hospital Programme. At its heart is Hospital 2.0, the programme's standardised approach to hospital design and delivery, combining repeatable design, digital innovation, modern methods of construction, consistent technical standards and sustainable construction.
Because a substantial proportion of the design is common across schemes, effort is concentrated on what is genuinely specific to each site and each community. Improvements identified on one hospital can be captured once and applied across the schemes that follow, while trusts remain in the lead so that national consistency is achieved without diluting local clinical leadership.
The New Hospital Programme is one of the UK's largest infrastructure programmes, backed by government investment rising to up to £15 billion over each consecutive five-year delivery wave and averaging around £3 billion a year from 2030. Wave 1 schemes are scheduled for main construction between 2025 and 2030. For the construction sector, the Alliance provides greater certainty over future work, supporting investment in people, manufacturing capacity, digital capability and modern methods of construction.
Anastasia Chrysafi, national healthcare lead at Willmott Dixon and its lead for the Hospital 2.0 Alliance:
“Stage 0 brings us into the team at the point where contractor knowledge and practical delivery experience can meaningfully inform the next stage of the scheme. We have three immediate priorities. First, making sure learning flows in both directions, so that what we learn in Cornwall benefits the wider programme and the experience of other schemes informs our work in Truro. Second, making sure Hospital 2.0 standardisation supports Cornwall's clinical requirements and local context. Third, beginning meaningful engagement with Cornish businesses early enough for them to prepare and compete for opportunities as the programme develops.
“Contracts signed are an input, not an outcome. Success will be measured by whether the hospital provides better, safer and more efficient care for women, children and families, and creates an outstanding working environment for NHS staff.”
Kim O'Keeffe, acting chief executive officer at Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust:
“This is a really exciting milestone for RCHT. The appointment of Willmott Dixon through the national Hospital 2.0 Alliance brings valuable expertise into our programme at a crucial stage and strengthens our ability to deliver a hospital that will transform care for families here in Cornwall and on the Isles of Scilly.”
Building on Derriford
Willmott Dixon's Wales & West team is already on site at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, delivering the £140m Emergency Care Building for University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, the first Wave 1 scheme in the New Hospital Programme to begin main construction. The same team, supply chain and learning will carry forward to Truro, sixty miles west.
Willmott Dixon has delivered more than 100 healthcare projects across the NHS estate over the past decade, spanning acute, mental health, community and neighbourhood facilities, most of them within live clinical settings where infection control, phasing and patient dignity are not negotiable. It has built more than 30 community health centres, is the UK's leading Passivhaus contractor and is a supplier on the £500m NHS Shared Business Services Decarbonisation of Estates Framework, which covers the South West.
Local investment and social value
Willmott Dixon sets deliberate targets for local spend within ten, twenty and forty miles of its sites. On comparable health projects that has meant millions of pounds spent with businesses within forty miles, alongside apprenticeships, T-level placements and its Building Lives Academies, which give people facing barriers to employment a route into the industry.