Отсутствие прототипа ставит под угрозу успех программы Hospital 2.0 в Англии

Hospital 2.0 promises faster, more efficient delivery through standardisation and collaboration. But without a prototype, the first wave risks locking in design flaws across multiple schemes before lessons can be learned and acted on, says CN editor Colin Marrs. England is trying something different with hospitals. At the end of July, contracts were signed with main contractors on a new wave of schemes, dubbed Hospital 2.0. Delivery, via a collaborative framework, will rely heavily on standardised designs, digital tools and extensive use of modern methods of construction. The programme’s alliance model has some attractive features. Much of the £14bn pipeline of work will be standardised across facilities, which should enable a robust supply chain to emerge. Other benefits touted by the NHS include earlier contractor involvement and a structure for all parties to share lessons and learn from each other. The inspiration for Hospital 2.0 is the Ministry of Justice’s Alliance 4 New Prisons programme – which also adopted collaborate methods. HMP Millsike, which opened in 2025, was the first of four prisons planned. Planning delays, combined with the collapse of alliance partner ISG, meant that the other schemes fell behind schedule. Millsike ended up, more by accident than design, as a de facto prototype. Hospital 2.0 has no such prototype planned. Seven of the 11 newly partnered schemes replace hospitals built wholly or primarily from reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC). Virtually all of the first wave of Hospital 2.0 schemes are scheduled to start construction next year. As every site manager knows, no matter how good the design, some problems become visible only during construction. Others remain hidden until a building is operational. This lack of a prototype places heavier demands on the alliance’s internal machinery – lessons must travel between sites faster than the Millsike experience allowed. In addition, large hospitals are also likely to fall under the Building Safety Regulator’s gateway regime. Any change to an approved design would then have to be logged and checked. Bigger changes would need the regulator’s sign-off before work can go ahead. Even if lessons can be shared in time, the cost and hassle of resubmission could raise the threshold for which lessons get acted on. Standardisation is a double-edged tool. Applied well, it lets a successful solution be repeated efficiently across the pipeline. Applied badly, with several schemes designed and committed before problems surface, it could end up repeating a flaw with the same efficiency. The real risk for the first Hospital 2.0 wave is not that standardisation fails to deliver consistency, but that political pressure to build quickly locks in a mistake before anyone has the chance to spot it.