Episode 4 of Shaping Infrastructure podcast: Private Capital for Public Good – Lessons from the New Footscray Hospital

Welcome to the fourth episode of Plenary’s podcast: Private Capital for Public Good – Lessons from the New Footscray Hospital.

In this episode, we’re diving into the question: how does a precinct-based approach to public infrastructure revolutionise the idea of a community hospital?

How better to answer this question than by peeling the layers back on the single largest health infrastructure investment in the state of Victoria – the $1.5 billion new Footscray Hospital?

Join various experts as they speak about the financial rigour, design vision and community focus underpinning the new Footscray Hospital – a landmark public health project in Melbourne’s west that redefines what a hospital can be for its community.

Host: Sonia Nair, Plenary Group Communications and Content Manager

Guests:

• Kelvyn Lavelle, New Footscray Hospital Project Delivery Chair
• Katie Hall MP, State Member for Footscray
• Professor Russell Harrison, Western Health CEO
• Allison Jessup, Billard Leece Partnership Senior Associate and Interior Design Lead
• Paul Curry, Cox Architecture Director
• Michaela Jones, Multiplex Construction Manager
• Clare Shiell, Plenary Group Executive Director, Portfolio Delivery
• Dr Ainslie Senz, Footscray Emergency Department Director
• Carl Retschko, Plenary Group Co-Head of Origination, Asia Pacific
• Jeff Stewart, Plenary Group Project Director
• Daniel Santangeli, Footscray Community Arts CEO and Artistic Director  
• Professor Itamar Levinger, Victoria University Associate Director Research Training, Institute for Health and Sport
• Llewellyn Prain, Non-Executive Director and Consultant
• Lucy Cole, VIDA Health Program Director, Delivery

Full transcript

Sonia Nair: Welcome to Shaping Infrastructure, the podcast from Plenary where we explore the transformative power of smart, well-planned public infrastructure.  

I’m your host Sonia Nair. In this episode, we’re diving into the question: how does a precinct-based approach to public infrastructure revolutionise the idea of a community hospital?

How better to answer this question than by peeling the layers back on the single largest health infrastructure investment in the state of Victoria – the $1.5 billion new Footscray Hospital?

Footscray, and the inner west more broadly, has been a heartland of multicultural, working-class neighbourhoods due to waves of migration from corners of the world as disparate as Vietnam, Italy, Greece, Sudan, India and China. More recently, the growing acknowledgement of Footscray’s plum location on the outskirts of the CBD has led to its gentrification.

Whatever the reason, demand for hospital care will more than double across Melbourne’s west in the next two decades – faster than any other healthcare population in Victoria – and these needs will be increasingly complex and diverse. Enter the new Footscray Hospital.

In this latest episode, we talk to various experts about the financial rigour, design vision and community focus underpinning the new Footscray Hospital – a landmark public health project in Melbourne’s west that redefines what a hospital can be for its community.

A long time coming

Sonia Nair: The Footscray Hospital of yesteryear is famously known as the People’s Hospital after the community campaigned for over 30 years and bought the site on which the hospital finally opened in 1953. This collegiate spirit carries through to the new hospital, with many of the people who worked on the project possessing deep, longstanding ties to Melbourne’s western suburbs. 

Kelvyn Lavelle: Well, my connection to Footscray is that I was born there. Often, people come back to live where they first started and that’s what I’ve done – I live there now. And in part, like a lot of people in the western suburbs, you know, I either attended the hospital or had relatives that did.

Sonia Nair: That’s Kelvyn Lavelle, Chair of the New Footscray Hospital Project during its delivery phase and a born-and-bred local.

Clare Shiell: I grew up in the Sunshine and Footscray area, went to school there, went past that site on the school bus for many years. So, I think it was that deep personal connection.

What a transformational project it was going to be, let alone the biggest funded infrastructure project in Victoria’s health history. So, all of those things were just, you know, kind of really green flags to me to say, “Clare, definitely get involved in this project.”

Sonia Nair: That’s Clare Shiell, Executive Director, Portfolio Delivery at Plenary who joined the company in 2022 specifically to work on the hospital project.

The new Footscray Hospital may have opened its doors to the community earlier this year, but discussions have been underway for more than a decade, as Western Health CEO Russell Harrison recalls.

Russell Harrison: Now you’re really making me feel old and dating me because I have been at Western Health since 2013. Day two of my tenure at Western Health was talking about the new Footscray Hospital as was. Back then, it was a very different prospect. So, it was going to be redeveloping one building on the old site.

Sonia Nair: But Kelvyn, who was on the Western Health Board at the time, was having none of that.

Kelvyn Lavelle: Having experienced through Plenary what a transformative impact a new hospital can be on a community, I was really very keen – as were other members of the board – to take the opportunity for replacement of Footscray to be a new build and a complete new hospital rather than a four-stage redevelopment.

You know, we’re a growing population. We have particular health needs that are unique to our community. We need something that reflects those needs and reflects that growing population.

Sonia Nair: Discussions to develop a new site started happening in earnest. In 2017, the new hospital got the green light. Katie Hall, State Member for Footscray, recalls getting the call from Jill Hennessy, Victoria’s Health Minister at the time.

Katie Hall: The first time I found out that we had secured funding for the new Footscray Hospital – which has been, you know, decades really in the making in terms of community activism – I cried. And I felt so happy, so pleased that investment was coming to Footscray, to Melbourne’s inner west, and that we would have a world-class hospital for our community.

Sonia Nair: Lucy Cole, Program Director, Delivery at VIDA Health, says the government made the decision to construct an entirely new hospital to meet forecast levels of future demand.

Lucy Cole: The hospital was originally designed to give greater access to care for people closer to home and kind of deliver a critical uplift in the long-term capacity of public health services in that area, particularly in Melbourne’s western corridor. It was expected that the demand for services in the area would more than double over the next 20 years.

It’s not that common to see such a city-shaping project in Melbourne’s inner-west. So, the investment has been a long time coming and the old Footscray Hospital was well and truly old by the time it got replaced.

The bid and the private capital imperative

Sonia Nair: The Victorian Government made the crucial decision to deliver the new Footscray Hospital as a public-private partnership, otherwise known as a PPP.

In 2020, Carl Retschko, Plenary’s Co-Head of Origination for Asia Pacific, led Plenary’s bid to deliver the new Footscray Hospital in partnership with the state government and Western Health.

What was central to Plenary’s ambition for the hospital was the very specific context in which it sat and the adoption of a precinct lens to ensure the hospital wouldn’t be a standalone building, according to Carl.

Carl Retschko: We wanted it to be an asset that returned utility and function and benefits back to the local neighbourhood, but also to the people of Footscray and, more broadly, the western suburbs. And so, there was a real focus on community. There was a real focus on creating a precinct that actually extended beyond the hospital itself.

Sonia Nair: The Plenary Health consortium was assembled, with Multiplex as builder, Honeywell and Compass Group as facility services providers, and Cox Architecture and Billard Leece Partnership as the integrated design team. Plenary itself was sponsor and investor, and had committed to being the hospital’s asset manager for 25 years once it was completed. The way Plenary Health came together is one of the many benefits of PPPs, says Clare.

Clare Shiell: Private sector capital is a way in which we can bring a whole lot of other parties to the table and we can deliver on additional scope at our risk that can enhance the solution to the state. But we have a long-term legacy that we are there for, for all phases of the project from bid and design right through to completion and then into operations.

Sonia Nair: According to Kelvyn, it was incumbent on Plenary to define what a community hospital was.

Kelvyn Lavelle: We knew what a cancer facility was in VCCC. We knew what a children’s hospital was in terms of the Royal Children’s Hospital. But what defined a community hospital? What did that mean?

And I think the concept we settled on, which I think drove a lot of the subsequent development around the precinct, was permeability. That you couldn’t be a community hospital unless you were able to attract easily professionals to work there, that it had to be permeable from a perspective of patients and carers and visitors to get in and out of the facility.

That if you’re investing $1.5 billion into one facility in a community, then it had to have a broader use than just as a hospital.

I think the other reason projects like this benefit from private capital is that multiplier effect – $30, $40 million dollars of investment in a private building next door to the hospital.

The Tiernan Street building on the corner of Tiernan Street and Ballarat Road is a privately-financed project. It’s a commercial building, so it will include a medical imaging business, a general practitioner. There’s a childcare centre on the roof. There’s a number of other health-related businesses that will tenant that out over time. On the ground floor, there are several cafes, restaurants that are outward-facing. So again, become part of that permeability story.

Sonia Nair: Integral to realising Plenary’s vision of a precinct were the integrated design team helmed by Cox Architecture and Billard Leece Partnership. Senior Associate at Billard Leece Partnership and the project’s Interior Design Lead, Allison Jessup, narrates.

Allison Jessup: Cox Architecture – incredibly strong at civic work and architectural vision. And Tract, being landscape architects, understood the ecology, the different microclimates that were created across the campus. And then BLP brought clinical health planning and healthcare operations, but also direct experience of space for patients, for staff, for visitors, students.  

Sonia Nair: From the outset, the consortium was driven by the guiding principle that this hospital would be a gamechanger, according to Cox Architecture Director Paul Curry.

Paul Curry: Hospitals traditionally have been very clinical and sterile by nature, but how can we start to look at them differently now?

The sheer scale of the project

Sonia Nair: Before we chart the project’s journey from design to construction to completion, let’s zoom out for a minute. Here’s a snapshot of the sheer scale of the new Footscray Hospital.

Michaela Jones: So, nothing about this project was small. Everything was super-scaled, from design all the way through to construction all the way through to testing. So, we had ten tower cranes – I think it was the largest number of tower cranes (definitely in Victoria) on any project.

We had over 5,000 panels of airtight façade. We had over 85,000 pieces of furniture, fixtures and equipment and that varied in complexity.

And then, you know, moving through to commissioning and testing, we had over 500 tests that we had to complete with numerous stakeholders. We had over 100 design submissions and over 600 user reference groups.

Sonia Nair: That’s Michaela Jones, Construction Manager at Multiplex.

Allison Jessup: Working through hundreds of engagement sessions with various stakeholders, which included clinicians, community members, different cultural groups in Footscray, government, Western Health staff. I think, overall, there were thousands of pieces of engagement in this project.

People call architecture of health the Olympics of architecture – there is such complexity with the engineering and services and clinical requirements and infection control requirements.

Sonia Nair: That’s Allison of Billard Leece Partnership. 

Heralding hitherto unseen levels of collaboration between healthcare, medicine and research in the west, the four-level, $63 million Victoria University Research Building forms a key part of the precinct. Professor Itamar Levinger, Clinical Exercise Physiologist and Associate Director of Research Training at the Institute of Health and Sport, speaks of its breadth.

Itamar Levinger: It is approximately 2,000 sqm of facilities. It will support around 300 researchers, high-degree research students, masters, PhD students. And we invested over $3 million in new research equipment. This significantly will expand our research capabilities across multiple disciplines like exercise, physiology, physiotherapy, biomedicine, nutrition, dietetics, psychology, social worker, and we’re really excited also to have health-related AI.

Sonia Nair: Even the art within the hospital is symptomatic of its scale. Plenary enlisted Footscray Community Arts to develop a comprehensive program of public artworks for the hospital. CEO and Artistic Director Daniel Santangeli cites the commissioned foyer tapestry ‘Welcome to country. Now you see me seeing the invisible’ that was developed by First Nations artists Maree Clarke and Mitch Mahoney in collaboration with the Australian Tapestry Workshop.

Daniel Santangeli: This tapestry is one of the largest in Australia. It’s definitely the largest in a hospital setting. It weighs more than 135 kilos. It’s made from more than 270 kilometres worth of wool, and it took 12 weavers from the Australian Tapestry Workshop to make.

Public health in the time of COVID

Sonia Nair: Bidding on, planning for and delivering a complex, multifaceted hospital was made even more urgent by the onset of a global pandemic. As challenging as it was working collectively while being physically separated, Allison of BLP says COVID-19 made very real the conditions for which they were designing the hospital for.

Allison Jessup: The pandemic challenged us to create a building that was much more resilient, more adaptable, and ultimately, more future-focused. So, there was a lot of redesigning, retesting, really interrogating the brief to make sure that we had done the best we could with what we knew.

Sonia Nair: Dr Ainslie Senz, Director of Footscray Emergency Department, references how COVID-19 had a concrete flow-on effect.

Ainslie Senz: Many resusc(itation) departments around Australia are very open areas because it helps with nursing and visibility, but we very quickly closed them down. We also added in pandemic zones, so our whole entire resusc(itation) zone is able to be negatively pressured, and we have an entrance from the ambulance bay into the resusc(itation) area to help with a COVID patient potentially, or even worse, an Ebola patient. The whole area – we can lock it down and negatively pressure.

We worked a lot on the waiting room. It’s very difficult to make a waiting room safe from a communicable disease point-of-view. But we did a lot of work with the designers and the engineers about how many air exchanges would be appropriate in that area, to ensure that if there was infection there, it was being whisked away as quickly as possible.

The community is always right

Sonia Nair: With aspirations for the new Footscray Hospital to be the new frontier of the People’s Hospital, Katie Hall MP chaired the hospital’s community consultative committee to ensure the new hospital incorporated resident and community input.

That’s how Llewellyn Prain – local community member and board director with lived experience of visual impairment – got involved in the project.

Llewellyn Prain: Plenary did an amazing job in bringing a group of really diverse people who had strong connections into the community, had a sense of what the west was all about, and were able to bring that perspective both to the bid, but then also through to the end of the build.

We had First Nations communities, we had people from local support services, we had people from different cultural communities – different aspects of the very rich and beautiful culture that is Footscray.

It wasn’t always the same group but despite that, it was a very unified purpose. Everyone was very clear about why they were there and had a very strong vision for the hospital.

Sonia Nair: Katie Hall MP points to several key features of the hospital that came out of community advocacy.

Katie Hall: We don’t have enough public open space here in the inner west, so to have such a large green space for patients and the broader community to engage with was really important.

Childcare was important. We don’t have enough of it locally, but also for 5,000 staff that go to work in that building every day across the different shifts – to have a place to leave your little one while you’re at work was another important factor.

We wanted social enterprises to be involved in the hospital, and we’ve seen some terrific examples come up already. So, we have the Little Social – the café – there, and that’s fantastic because it’s giving young people training in hospitality while they’re working in that retail setting. Of course, we have the op shop. A hospital isn’t a hospital without the op shop. And it’s been wonderful to see those community touches from the reference group right there.

Sonia Nair: Russell speaks of the immense responsibility the government health agency and health workers felt to get it right.

Russell Harrison: These are once-in-a-generation opportunities to design a brand-new hospital. You get wings or you get departments or you get sort of add-ons. But to start from the ground up was really exciting – challenging – but really exciting.

If you make a few mistakes, then you’re not going to get the chance to rebuild it and you got to live with them for a very long time. So, we put a huge amount of effort in upfront with the documentation, through the bid phase, through the design development phase, through the build phase, to always continue to advocate that it had to be right.

The devil is in the design

Sonia Nair: The silhouette of curved lines; five majestic, interconnected buildings built around a communal green space; warm and comforting interiors with rounded forms, abundant natural light, intuitive wayfinding and sculptural timber ceilings. New Footscray Hospital’s architecture has already garnered the acclaim of several awards.

Encompassing feedback from the comprehensive consultation process, Cox Architecture, Billard Leece Partnership and landscape architects Tract worked in unison to realise the design vision of the new Footscray Hospital.

Allison Jessup: The more time we spent in Footscray, it became increasingly clear that the hospital shouldn’t feel like a beautiful Scandinavian hospital transplanted into Melbourne. Footscray has an incredibly unique identity. It’s really diverse, creative, multicultural. And it’s very deeply connected to its community. So rather than importing someone else’s architectural language, we really wanted to create something that belonged in Footscray.

Very early on, we all agreed that every part of the hospital should maintain a meaningful connection to nature, whether that’s through views or courtyards, winter gardens, the Village Green.

Sonia Nair: That’s Allison of Billard Leece Partnership. 

The famed Village Green, that can be accessed from any point, is the hospital’s social heart. It’s also unanimously everyone’s favourite part of the hospital.

Russell Harrison: We were thrilled when the Wurundjeri Elders named parts of the building; one example is the Bundha Lifts. And that means unity. And they drew that inspiration from the Village Green and the grass where people will come together. I think it’s a really special place.

Sonia Nair: Hospitals are physical manifestations of human-centred care, something Allison from BLP was deeply cognisant of when rethinking the medical typology.

Allison Jessup: In some of the subacute wards where people might spend a little bit longer in hospital, we have internal courtyards the ward is planned around. Patients and staff on every ward can access an outside area without having to go down a lift and walk out of the hospital. So, we made sure that every ward has a winter garden at the end of it, which can allow you to walk outside and it has an incredible feeling.

Sonia Nair: Jeff Stewart, the Project Director at Plenary who led the delivery of the hospital, relays a heartwarming anecdote.

Jeff Stewart: One of the first patients that come up onto one of the floors, as they were sort of wheeled out onto level 10 and saw the beautiful views, they turned around and said, “Oh, am I going to be charged extra for this?” So, it was great in that first day of patients coming into the hospital to get some positive feedback.

Sonia Nair: Much of the hospital’s emphasis on human-centred care was informed by the lived experience captured in the community consultation panels.

Llewellyn Prain: So many of our public institutions are not really built with lived experience or with community use or participation in mind and when you see a hospital that really has considered these things, you can see the difference that it makes.

There are plenty of quiet spaces. The access is clear and flat generally, which is important. And the space in the wards for families. It shows how amazing design can be inclusive.

Sonia Nair: Paul of Cox Architecture says community members like Llewellyn were pivotal when it came to informing the final design of the hospital.

Paul Curry: I remember Llewellyn well. There was a discussion that we had very early on, and she described what she could sense with her eyes where she could feel differences between light and dark, and how that was one of her ways of navigating space. And I was walking through once the project was finished, through Hospital Street with her, and her response to me was, “You know, this is fantastic. I can feel the conversations, and I can feel that I can navigate through.”

And what has evolved is really an outcome of those early conversations. So that was quite a powerful piece of feedback.

Sonia Nair: And tying it all together are the artworks grounded within the hospital that create a collective sense of joy and reflect the community for which the hospital was built.

Daniel of Footscray Community Arts says under a curatorial artistic framework centred on place, Footscray’s ongoing narratives of First Nations and migrant history were embedded into the hospital. An instance of this is Australian-Ethiopian artist Olana Janfa’s 83 handmade paintings.

Daniel Santangeli: He worked really closely with community, staff, volunteers, some school groups as well to come up with the concepts for the artworks. And now they’re displayed across all the waiting rooms, some of the patient clinic rooms as well – environments where you are just sitting there for a while, or in a really stressful moment of kind of trying to understand diagnosis or talk about recovery. And then one of Olana’s artworks are there, which can I think help break up some of the stress, give a talking point, and also create that sense of feeling home.

Sonia Nair: Hospital Street – a light-filled, central, pedestrian artery that wraps around the Village Green and connect all parts of the hospital – is a key tenet of the hospital’s legibility, according to architect Paul.

Paul Curry: We want a journey to be soft and fluid and not stressful, which starts to suggest curved corners and this seamless flow of space moving through that is just easy and no friction.

The benefits of a precinct approach

Sonia Nair: The Plenary Health consortium delivered the hospital based around this idea that it should be a destination not merely for the unwell, but the well too – something that’s already happening according to anecdotal evidence.

This idea originated as a provocation posed by one of the participants in an early community engagement session, according to Paul of Cox Architecture.

Paul Curry: We had this gentleman in the group that said, “What if from a hospital point of view, what if this was not just a place that we would go to get well, but somewhere that we could live well?” And that was such an important moment that really helped us to continue to explore what we were looking at with the design, but also evolve it to really push the limits of the boundaries of the hospital and how much integration we could get through.

Sonia Nair: Transforming the hospital into a wider precinct with numerous community and retail spaces, social activations, and multiple entries and exits throughout the site helped turn the hospital into a public realm – something that comes hand-in-hand with private capital, according to Delivery Project Chair Kelvyn.

Kelvyn Lavelle: The benefits of a precinct approach, too from a Plenary perspective, was that allowed us to leave no stone unturned around multiplying that public sector expenditure with private capital investment. For a local community like Footscray that hasn’t ever had an investment of that size, of any nature, really, in social infrastructure, that’s an opportunity that has to be leveraged. It’s just too good an opportunity to miss.

Sonia Nair: Paul says the collectively agreed upon spaces in the precinct normalises the hospital for different communities and cultures.

Paul Curry: Some cultures find a civic hospital very institutional and very daunting and [are] almost afraid to be there to a point that health issues are not addressed until they’re too late or more complicated to deal with.

Sonia Nair: Some of the mixed uses that we have around the Hospital Street; things like the community hall, the fresh food, the gymnasium, yoga on the lawn. We’re actually inviting the community in as part of their weekly routine so that when they do need a health checkup, it’s part of their space. They own it.

VU Research Building

Sonia Nair: A key part of the new Footscray Hospital precinct is the VU Research Building, with a footbridge linking the two institutions.

Professor Levinger speaks of the public health benefits that will ensue from this groundbreaking collaboration.

Itamar Levinger: The new VU Research Building is a major investment both for health and medical research in Melbourne’s west. You know, we are the largest university in the west joining forces with the biggest hospital in the West. So, we really hope that magic will happen in the area of health and medical research.

The collaboration between Western Health clinicians and VU researchers – it’s actually critical. Without that, it would be very difficult for us as researchers to answer real problems that medical research is facing.

It will really strengthen Victoria University’s capacity to study chronic disease prevention, management and treatment, healthy ageing. So, what we are trying to do is actually to make sure that people live longer but also healthier for much longer. So, to try to delay chronic disease, that people will live into their 70s, 80s, and 90s – still independent, without pain.

Sonia Nair: Russell from Western Health says the benefits of this co-location will transcend clinical health.

Russell Harrison: The co-location with Victoria University is really exciting. There’s a lot of stuff that we’re doing outside of the sort of more traditional clinical things. So, we’ve got IT students, finance graduates, legal and marketing types. So, all those things that are not usually associated with healthcare, but now are absolutely core to providing healthcare are also coming through university partnerships.

Delivery challenges and enablers

Sonia Nair: The hospital project that reached financial close in 2021 – during COVID, pre-war, pre-hyperinflation – was operating in a very different environment to the project that was completed five years on.

Clare Shiell: People forget – shipping costs went through the roof post-COVID. Labour was a really, you know, important factor for our contractors to manage. Specialist resources that are required for a hospital. All of those things, completely normal. But I think that, you know, it was the multi-layered impact of all of these things, the scale of the project, and the innovation that we were really trying to push – you know, just meant that everyone had to bring their A-game every single day to get us to the finish line. We didn’t just want good for the community, we wanted great.  

Sonia Nair: That was Clare from Plenary. Russell from Western Health says the common purpose of everyone having a connection to healthcare helped them get through these challenges.

Russell Harrison: It will get challenging. It will get tough. There will be disagreements and there will be delays and all the usual stuff you get on projects with so many stakeholders and so many competing elements. But that purpose – it’s a hospital and it is bringing this huge benefit to community for a really special purpose – I think kept it really grounded.

Sonia Nair: And as mentioned at the outset, so many people working on the project had a local connection, the significance of which Delivery Project Chair Kelvyn says cannot be underestimated

Kelvyn Lavelle: I think everyone recognised that these hospital projects are rare, and they are transformational for local people. And if it was going to be the one chance that Footscray had, then people were absolutely committed to making it a winner.  

Sonia Nair: Kelvyn also pays tribute to the project’s builder Multiplex.

Kelvyn Lavelle: We can’t deny that the builder Multiplex did an incredible job in the way that they delivered the project. They were 100 percent from day one and really, they were really critical to the project’s delivery, obviously being a constructor.

Sonia Nair: Katie Hall MP says the incredible outcome of a hospital delivered at a price and time that was set out five years prior was due to the discipline of private capital.

Katie Hall: In hindsight, we were not to know that COVID would happen and I think the government, as a result of the partnership, had exceptional value for money because costs escalated massively during that period of time. But we had certainty on this magnificent build being delivered on-time and on-budget.

Kelvyn Lavelle: The fixed price that we set pre-COVID was in fact still another 15% below the benchmark price that the State set as the number it felt it could do the project for, so it was an on-time, on-budget project delivered post-COVID at 15% less than what the State benchmarked. It’s an outstanding result for the taxpayer.

Transitioning from the old to the new

Sonia Nair: There will come a time when the new Footscray Hospital will simply be known as the Footscray Hospital, but transitioning from an old facility to a new one is not simply a huge logistical exercise – it’s an emotional one too, according to Dr Senz who has now worked across both facilities.

Ainslie Senz: There were a lot of people – medical and nursing staff, cleaners and porters, radiographers, etc – who had worked in that hospital for more than 20 years, some more than 30 years, and along that way, they collected stories and relationships and memories and experiences.

Sonia Nair: Katie Hall MP says this is reflected in wonderful ways throughout the hospital.

Katie Hall: When you’re walking through the bottom floor of the hospital, you can see representations of what was on the site beforehand. So, some of the old houses that were there. The story of the establishment of the original hospital, the volunteers, the clinicians and there are some remarkable stories of nurses and doctors who came here as refugees and have dedicated their working lives to Western Health.

Sonia Nair: In late 2025, the “keys” were handed over from Multiplex to Western Health ahead of Patient Move Day on 18 February 2026. Russell recalls how surreal it felt.

Russell Harrison: You don’t kind of get a box of keys anymore now. It’s all just like swipe cards.

Patient Move Day was really intense. We spent two years planning for it – for literally nine hours of activity. It feels a bit over the top when you think of it like that, but it was really important that we got that right.

We had to put in just over 22,500 hours of training for staff to be familiar with the building. It’s very rare you run two hospitals simultaneously as you wind one down and bring one online. It was challenging. We safely moved 115 patients as part of Move Day.

Sonia Nair: For Western Health, Patient Move Day was full of excitement and nerves, while the rest of the consortium could scarcely believe that the facility was finally operational. Michaela from Multiplex describes the feeling.

Michaela Jones: The team know that they’re designing and building a health facility and everything that goes into it, every nut and bolt. You know, we’re across it all. However, it’s a very different sense of achievement and pride when you see patients start using the space.

That, without a doubt, was the biggest milestone for us.

Longevity and futureproofing

Sonia Nair: One of the most important principles of sustainability is endurance, says Allison of BLP.

Allison Jessup: One of the greatest forms of sustainability that there can be is good design that works really well for its intended function and design that a community connects with – so something that has a sense of place. Because having to demolish something and rebuild is really terrible for sustainability.

So, with that in mind, things like flexible planning were incredibly important, adaptable departments, durable materials, spaces that can evolve as a model of care might change.

The most sustainable building isn’t always the one with the lowest operational energy. It’s often more to do with a building that people value enough so that they can adapt it rather than replace it. And we think that we have achieved that in the new Footscray Hospital.

Sonia Nair: Russell from Western Health had to think a lot about how the hospital could endure for the sake of its patients and local community.

Russell Harrison: How do we build a hospital that can continue to evolve as technology changes, as the community needs change, as we keep growing?

So, we’ve got spaces that can be converted into future ward areas. We’ve got shell space that is hidden that will come online. So, we’ve got additional – as they call it in the trade – points of care. But it’s more beds, it’s cubicles, it’s theatres, it’s intensive care beds. There’s a whole raft of different clinical spaces that we can bring online in time to continue to grow this hospital up to nearly 800 points of care from the 650 that we have now. So, there’s a big jump pre-built in.

And I think the other thing that I was thrilled about: we got a whole raft of new, modern technology. In our theatres, we have some of the world-first technology, that’s already saving patients’ lives.

Sonia Nair: Dr Senz says if no one wants to knock down a wall in the foreseeable future, it’s a job well done.

Ainslie Senz: I really wanted the emergency department to stand the test of time. There are many emergency departments who respond to latest surges or latest innovations, and then they don’t work in the future, and so I really wanted to make sure that the basics of emergency care were delivered really well.

I’ll be really proud if it adapts to different models of care and different patient populations and surges in demand or changes in patient cohorts.

Sonia Nair: Delivery Project Chair Kelvyn says the emphasis on flexibility and futureproofing extends to every facet of the build.

Kelvyn Lavelle: The carpark and the commercial buildings all were built with foundations that could allow, you know, multi-storey facilities to be placed there in the event that the site needed to be refurbished or renewed for a new hospital.

Exciting times ahead

Sonia Nair: What excites everyone about the new hospital? For Professor Levinger, it’s VU being embedded in a leading healthcare precinct.

Itamar Levinger: Melbourne’s west is one of Australia’s fastest growing areas, one of the most culturally diverse regions. One of the things that I’m excited is about the proximity to the people and to the patients. Actually, we are embedded now within Western Health and the community. So, we really can provide our services to the people that we need exactly where they are. They don’t need to travel specifically for us.

Sonia Nair: For Katie Hall MP, it’s the sense that this place will be a hub of healing.

Katie Hall: No one ever wants to be in hospital. But if you have to be in there – to have light, bright spaces; rooms with just one bed and your own ensuite; magnificent views; balconies that you can go out to to get fresh air. To see the place open, to see patients come in and not believe that they are in a public hospital – that’s the most special thing about this hospital.

It has been so thoughtfully designed and executed that the correspondence I receive in my office is this overwhelming sense of awe of the place. For the clinicians, they have world-class facilities to operate in, and that is exactly what my community deserves.

Sonia Nair: No matter who I speak to on the project, everyone throughout every level expresses a gratitude to have worked on such a lifechanging infrastructure precinct.

Michaela Jones: A project like this isn’t built by one or two people, it’s built by an entire village and, you know, the number of people that touched on this project is absolutely phenomenal. And everyone’s just so incredibly proud of what we’ve delivered.

Sonia Nair: That’s Michaela of Multiplex. Bid Lead Carl has to pinch himself when he sees design, operational and functional details that he discussed way back in 2020 coming to fruition in 2026.

Carl Retschko: It’s such a rare privilege to see your ideas brought to life and what’s amazing is the early decisions and considerations that you have during the bid are realised in the physical space or in the commercial structure or in the precinct outcome.

Sonia Nair: The hospital’s Project Director Jeff, who shepherded the hospital through its final stages of delivery, says it was a career highlight.

Jeff Stewart: To work on, you know, a project that has such meaning for the people of the west and delivers such great health outcomes, but also is delivered with the beautiful architecture that is the new Footscray Hospital, was a real thrill for me.

Sonia Nair: Dr Senz doesn’t think it’s one that’ll happen again.

Ainslie Senz: Being involved in the design of this ED is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-career opportunity.

Sonia Nair: But not many people’s involvement in the hospital dates further back than Delivery Project Chair Kelvyn Lavelle’s and Western Health CEO Russell Harrison’s. They distil the hospital’s impact into its simplest terms.

Kelvyn Lavelle: It’s a $1.5 billion investment in a local community. That, in itself, is economically transformative for Footscray. It sends a really clear message to the local western region population that their health needs are important.

Russell Harrison: The thing that makes me most proud is we did it. We collectively delivered a staggeringly big, transformative piece of infrastructure that will serve the community and our workforce for many years to come.

I think it was all a highlight, because you know, a project of this scale and magnitude and a transformative nature of it in the community and to our staff – it’s almost incalculable.

Sonia Nair: Thanks for tuning into our fourth Shaping Infrastructure episode. In future episodes, we’ll continue to explore how the collaboration between the public and private sector works in practice, looking at yet more real projects that are delivering tangible outcomes for communities.

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Guests in Episode 4: Private Capital for Public Good – Lessons from the New Footscray Hospital

Kelvyn Lavelle joined Plenary Group in 2005, was Delivery Chair of Plenary Health New Footscray Hospital and is an advisor to Plenary. For over 17 years, he was responsible for leading Plenary’s external communications and directing corporate, government, and media strategies across the business. Kelvyn has developed an expertise in both private and public sector public infrastructure delivery and has worked on high profile public infrastructure projects across multiple jurisdictions.  

Katie Hall MP loves Footscray and the strength and diversity of the community. She is passionate about social justice and fairness, and wants the best for the inner west. This is what prompted her to run for Parliament. The priorities Katie has for her community and constituents are for every young person to have access to the highest quality public education, the new Footscray Hospital project and to improve the local community for a greener and cleaner inner west.

Professor Russell Harrison is a highly experienced healthcare executive who has served as Western Health’s CEO for almost a decade. Before that, he held a range of senior positions within the UK’s National Heath Service as well as in private health. Bringing with him extensive experience in acute hospitals, mental health, the community sector and the commissioning of health services, Russell was appointed Executive Director of Operations at Western Health in 2013 before being promoted to CEO in 2017.

Allison Jessup is is a Senior Associate and Interior Design Lead at Billard Leece Partnership. With over 30 years’ experience, she sees design as a way of connecting people with place. Her work brings together storytelling, collaboration and rigorous design thinking to create environments that are meaningful, engaging and distinctly their own.

Paul Curry is a skilled architect and valued member of the COX leadership team. He has a depth of expertise across multiple sectors and geographies including significant residential, health, hotel, sports, commercial and justice projects. This breadth of work allows him to embed richness of design and pragmatic knowledge into every project and sees him uniquely adept in leading large teams.

Michaela Jones is a Construction Manager with Multiplex Victoria, bringing 16 years of experience delivering major and complex projects, including the recently completed New Footscray Hospital. She is currently leading the ECI for the Australian Institute for Infectious Disease project at the University of Melbourne. Michaela is passionate about teamwork, leadership, and delivering lasting infrastructure that benefits the community. Outside of work, she is a proud mum of three daughters.

Clare Shiell joined Plenary in October 2022 and has strategic oversight of Plenary’s delivery phase projects. Clare provides essential support to project teams, senior management and the Plenary board to understand and manage the risks and challenges within our delivery assets. Clare is also a member of the Plenary executive leadership team. Clare has been involved in and has led the delivery and operations of some of Victoria’s largest public-private partnerships in justice and health.

Dr Ainslie Senz has been an Emergency Physician for nearly 15 years and became the Director of the Footscray Emergency Department nine years ago. Her work-related interests include leadership through change, and governance and strategy. She was instrumental in the implementation of routine violence risk assessment in Emergency Departments, the success of which prompted hospital-wide implementation locally and led to adoption in other hospital and ambulance services.

Carl Retschko is Co-Head of Plenary’s Asia Pacific Origination business, which focuses on the bidding and development of infrastructure projects throughout the region. As Co-Head, Carl leads the Melbourne Origination team and is responsible for pricing, structuring, negotiation and execution of transactions from inception to financial close. Since joining Plenary in 2005, Carl’s project experience has seen him leading and contributing to numerous bids and projects throughout the region.

Jeff Stewart is a Project Director at Plenary. He works across Plenary’s State clients, design and construct contractors and consultant teams, bringing these groups together with the broader Plenary project team to successfully deliver large complex assets – most recently, the new Footscray Hospital.

Daniel Santangeli is a social impact and creative industries leader. Joining Footscray Community Arts in late 2019, he is currently leading the organisation through a significant transformation following an $8.7m precinct redevelopment investment from State Government. Prior to his time at Footscray Community Arts, Daniel was Program Manager at Midsumma Festival, a producer at Next Wave and Chair for Outer Urban Projects.

Professor Itamar Levinger is a Clinical Exercise Physiologist and the Associate Director of Research Training for the Institute for Health and Sport at Victoria University. His specific expertise is in clinical exercise rehabilitation. His research focuses on bone-muscle interaction and the role the skeleton may play in the development of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and sarcopenia.

Llewellyn Prain is is a non-executive director and consultant.  A fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, she has board experience spanning the infrastructure, disability, health, legal and transport sectors. Llewellyn has a vision impairment and is a strong advocate for the strengths and rights of people with disability. Her business PrainInclusion provides governance, leadership and disability inclusion services.

Lucy Cole is an experienced infrastructure leader with a strong track record in delivering major public infrastructure projects and public-private partnerships. Currently serving as Program Director, Delivery at VIDA Health, Lucy has held senior leadership roles on some of Victoria’s largest infrastructure initiatives, including the New Footscray Hospital and North East Link Project.