“I really am here to make it happen, and that means being prepared to fall out with people sometimes. You have got to be brave and bold about how you advocate for what we should be doing – and that doesn’t mean going along with the status quo most of the time.”

New Hospital Programme (NHP) commercial director Emma-Jane Houghton knows what she wants and she knows what she needs to do to make it happen.

The woman picked to lead the commercial strategy for the government’s decade-long hospital building programme – which will see 40 hospitals built across England by 2030 – is aware of the huge task in front of both her team as a client and the construction industry that is going to have to deliver it. Overall the programme consists of 48 hospitals, eight of which are active projects which Houghton’s team has inherited in flight.

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