Work has been on hold at the super hospital building site, which is two thirds finished, since Carillion’s collapse in January while the Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust formulated a plan to proceed.
Toby Lewis, the chief executive of the Trust confirmed that Skanska was now on board to complete the hospital project and the trust was waiting for the Government to rubberstamp plans to restart work.
Project electrical contractor N G Bailey has been stood down and Skanska is expected to use its in-house M&E business SRW to complete the job.
The hospital had already been delayed during planning of work and was due to open next year. That date has been pushed back to 2020.
He told Sky News, which was granted access to the site: “We are expecting that to finish this hospital it will cost about £100m to £125m more than had originally been anticipated.”
“Our absolute target is to open in 2020 and that is 18 months later than we’d hoped.”
It emerged that the trust is now waiting for three Government departments to sign off the restart plans.
“I think our time now is for decision and bluntly we can use the summer sunshine to get building,” said Lewis.
