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UK Business
Experience
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Initially, Catalyst focused on the healthcare sector, winning two of the early PFI hospital projects, in Halifax and Worcester. These hospitals opened in 2001 and 2002.
Further successes quickly followed, with Catalyst being selected to build new hospitals in Hexham, Romford, Roehampton, Burnley, Manchester and Leeds.
Burnley, Roehampton and Romford all opened in 2006, the Queen’s Hospital Romford being the biggest yet built by Catalyst, with 4,500 rooms, 939 beds and costing £261 million. The Leeds Oncology Centre will complete in 2008 and Manchester Joint Hospitals in 2009.
Focus Education, a Catalyst-managed joint venture with Bank of Scotland, has also completed three PFI projects in the education sector, involving seven schools in Lincolnshire, six in Newcastle and the Lilian Baylis Technology School in Lambeth. In South Yorkshire, Catalyst is now developing a PFI-funded student village for Sheffield University. Work started in autumn 2006 on Catalyst’s biggest education PFI, the £200 million Lancashire Schools scheme, one of the first of the Government’s Building Schools for the Future investments.
One of Britain’s largest and most high profile PFIs has been the £260 million two-stage refurbishment and remodelling of HM Treasury, a 100-year-old listed Government building that had remained virtually untouched since it was completed. The transformation achieved by Exchequer Partnership, a PFI consortium led by Bovis Lend Lease and Stanhope, has almost doubled the workspace available while carefully preserving the history and the heritage of this famous London landmark.
The skills and experience gained in Britain’s PFI sector over the past decade have now been successfully exported to Italy and Spain by Bovis Lend Lease, where the company is now working on local healthcare projects, modelled on the PFI process.
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