The hospital boom reaches the supply chain

From my desk

The New Hospital Programme stopped being a press release this week and started being a procurement exercise. Five hospital schemes in the East of England went out to the supply chain on Friday, weeks after the programme signed its 11 delivery partnerships. That is the moment the market has been waiting for. Partnerships put logos on a page; procurement puts people on programmes.

Most of my week went the same way. The desk is now heavily weighted to hospital delivery talent: a Design Director appointment for a major NHS hospital programme, an information management lead on a tier-one NHP scheme, and a candidate campaign into three hospital contractors. When a programme this size moves from framework to delivery, the first shortage is never materials. It is people who have delivered healthcare schemes under NEC before.

If you lead design, delivery or commercial on healthcare work, the next 18 months are your market.

The week in construction

• Five East of England hospital schemes opened their search for supply chain partners. The New Hospital Programme is now buying, not just announcing. Expect the same trades and the same delivery managers to be chased by five clients at once; wage pressure in healthcare delivery will show before Christmas. (Construction Enquirer)
• Balfour Beatty posted strong half-year results, crediting its focus on growing markets, and Costain predicted a step change in performance from 2027. Infrastructure-weighted order books are doing exactly what they were built to do. The tier ones that repositioned early are now hiring with confidence. (Enquirer: Balfour Beatty, Enquirer: Costain)
• Laing O'Rourke and HMJV will lead a £1bn North London grid upgrade to power the data centre boom. Energy and digital infrastructure is now a genuine destination for major projects careers, not a side market. Watch where the programme directors go. (Construction Enquirer)
• The other side of the market: groundworks specialist JAO ceased trading, scaffolder Blencowe and M&E firm ACES filed administration notices, and Ardmore's directors are pursuing a CVA for seven property companies. Record top lines and rising specialist failures in the same week. If you run a scheme, know the balance sheets underneath you. (Enquirer: JAO, Enquirer: Ardmore)
• Kier took a second Derwent London office scheme at £99m on Oxford Street. Repeat business from a named client predicts a contractor's next five years better than turnover does. (Construction Enquirer)

People on the move

• Nick Corrigan joins Morgan Sindall as Area Director for the North East, from Willmott Dixon.
• John Ammentorp has been appointed Head of Global Energy at Arup.
• Currie & Brown has brought in a new head of infrastructure, joining from Midlands Connect.
• John Fitzgerald, formerly of Telford Homes, joins Hill as Area Director.

Other areas of interest

A reader asked how I keep track of who is moving where. The honest answer: software does the reading, I do the judging. A system I have built scans the trade press and public announcements every night, logs every senior appointment in UK construction, and tiers each one by how relevant the company is to the work I do. By Monday morning the week's moves are a shortlist rather than a search.

The judgement stays manual. A tool can tell you a director has moved; it cannot tell you what the move says about the business they left. That part stays human, and it is usually where the interesting conversation is.

One useful thing

It is results season. If you are weighing up a move to a contractor, read their half-year statement before you read the offer letter. Skip the headline revenue and look at two things: the order book mix (how much is secured, and in which sectors) and the cash position. Balfour Beatty and Costain both published this week; ten minutes with either tells you more about job security than any interview answer will.

What I'm working on

I am appointing a Design Director for a major NHS hospital programme, leading design from feasibility through to construction on one of the largest healthcare schemes in the country. Alongside it sit several senior commercial, planning and information roles on the same programme. If hospital delivery is your world, or you know someone whose world it is, I would value the conversation.