Contractor enters Spanish market with £100m Madrid hospital deal as PFI and PPP attract global interest

Bovis Lend Lease has won a contract to build and manage a €50m (£100m) hospital in Madrid, Spain’s first healthcare PFI project.

Bovis is part of a consortium that includes Dragados, Spain’s largest general contractor, and Grupo Sufi, a Spanish engineering, construction and services company.

The project involves the financing, design, construction and facilities management of an 800-bed hospital that will serve the needs of 520,000 people. It will replace the Puerta de Hierro hospital in the suburb of Majadahonda.

Bovis’ European, Middle East and Africa subsidiary has already completed a European PFI hospital project in Brescia, Italy. Sergio Casari, its chief executive, said the Majadahonda project opened up another PFI market.

He said: “Our strategy is to continue to pursue selective PFI/concession opportunities in the region.”

This Spanish project is on the leading edge of wave of global PFI deals.

Tim Steadman, a partner in legal firm Clifford Chance, said that many countries were now preparing to negotiate PPP deals.

He said: “A new law has been passed in Brazil so it can carry out PPP deals. There is certainly an appetite in many countries to carry out this kind of procurement.”

Steadman added that other Latin American countries, such as Chile and Peru, were looking at PPPs.

Other countries carrying out PFIs include Australia and Singapore. China is working with consultant Cyril Sweett on its own version of the procurement route.

The Spanish hospital was designed by AIDHOS Architects, a Spanish architect with long experience in the health sector.

Comunidad de Madrid, Madrid’s regional authority, awarded the contract for the hospital to Bovis and its partners 10 weeks after they submitted their proposal.

The Majadahonda project is the first and biggest hospital planned by the authority and was launched shortly after a law permitting this kind of procurement was approved in Spain.

Over the next four to six years the authority plans to commission a further seven PFI hospitals in the city.

With this contract secured and Italy’s first PFI healthcare project in Brescia completed three months ahead of schedule, Bovis is on track to develop its presence in the rapidly developing PFI healthcare markets of Spain and Italy.