A major new hospital in Cwmbran, Wales, opens next week that could be the model for Boris Johnson’s aspirations to build 40 hospitals by 2030. Directly funded by the Welsh government, it is a happy story of a £350m hospital opening four months early, a first for a hospital of this size. It has also come in under budget.

In March, with the pandemic spiralling out of control, the health board asked the contractor Laing O’Rourke if the wards could be delivered earlier than scheduled. The project team pulled out all the stops and, in the space of five weeks, handed over the ward areas a year early so these could be used for patients with covid-19. This saved millions building a temporary Nightingale hospital.

The key reason for this success is that the Grange University Hospital represents the pinnacle of Laing O’Rourke’s investment and its belief that design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA) is the future of construction. When the contract was signed in 2017 Laing O’Rourke had been investing in DfMA for nearly 10 years. “What we did is take the best of what Laing O’Rourke has produced over 10 years and introduced it into this job,” says Mike Lewis, project director for the Grange.

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