Government News

1 March 2005

HOK's London Office Hosts PFI Roundtable

Private Finance Initiative discussion focused on improving building process in health care sector.

Hosted by HOK International at its offices in central London, this design roundtable examined how to improve the private finance initiative process for everyone in the health care sector.

The private finance initiative is the main mechanism for building new hospitals in the United Kingdom. With Treasury constraints on public capital, health officials' ability to deliver large new building projects is limited. Only with PFI can departments or devolved administrations engage in the kind of investment programmes they know their estates require.

"In England alone, there is a target to build 100 new hospitals by 2010, to say nothing of community and primary care facilities. The level of capital investment going into our hospitals has never been seen before. But are we getting the buildings we deserve? In the rush towards modernisation, there is a concern that design quality is being left by the wayside. The issue is a crucial one for the effectiveness and efficiency of our future health system."

Andrew Barraclough, head of public and institutional architecture at HOK, felt there was insufficient understanding of the value of good quality design among procurers. "We are interested in how we can make the whole patient experience much more enjoyable so that the recovery process is as efficient and speedy as possible," he said.

"If as part of the design, construction and funding process you can leverage the efficiency of an organisation by a couple of percent, over its entire life, the value of this is enormous.

"So I think, rather than worrying too much about what a facility's cost is, I would rather see us outline business cases that set out an affordability limit. This way, we can allow designers to engineer into that as much in the way of value as they can through innovation."

Barraclough felt that architects themselves had adapted to the long-term implications of PFI contracts. "Over the last 10 years the way architects think has changed totally and is much more focused now on the longer term issues," he said. "There was a time when architects had the inordinate pleasure of selecting pretty much what they wanted, often with user involvement amounting to little more than, 'do you like how this looks?' Now, they are very focused on how maintainable and functional buildings are."

Source: "Roundtable: Designs on a Better Process," Public Private Finance, March 2005.

Posted in: Architecture,Government