New Footscray Hospital takes shape

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – The $1.5 billion new Footscray Hospital is starting to take shape.

Minister for Health Martin Foley and Member for Footscray Katie Hall today visited the busy construction site on the corner of Geelong and Ballarat Roads to view how construction is progressing on the massive project for Melbourne’s booming west.

Since construction got underway in March last year, about 330,000 cubic metres of dirt and rock have been removed from the site as part of work to build the underground carpark and ground floor.

Eight concrete slabs have been poured including the first suspended slab for the 12-storey hospital. An impressive 36,000 tonnes of concrete have been poured on the site. Once complete, approximately 150,000 tonnes of concrete will have been used – that’s about  25 Olympic swimming pools’ worth.

The Integrated Practice Unit (IPU) tower is emerging and will soon be visible to the public from the street. Ten tower cranes support the 150 people working on the hospital’s construction site with the workforce expected to reach 500 by the middle of the year.

The new Footscray Hospital will replace the current hospital on Gordon Street, which was built in the 1950s. Set to open in 2025, it will support the growing population across Melbourne’s western suburbs.

Operated by Western Health, the new hospital will have more than 500 beds, treat almost 15,000 additional patients and allow almost 20,000 extra people to be seen by the emergency department each year. There will also be more outpatient, mental health, palliative care and surgical services.

The hospital is being delivered as a public-private partnership, with the Plenary Health consortium – comprising Plenary, Sojitz, Multiplex, Honeywell and Compass – contracted by the Victorian Government to finance, design, construct, and maintain the hospital for 25 years following construction completion.