The team will be led by professional services company Turner & Townsend and will include experienced architects in a unique partnership between Hawkins\Brown and White Arkitekter.
The appointment of the project design team, following a competitive tender process lasting several months, is a major milestone in the delivery of Cambridge Children’s, which is due to open in 2025.
Cambridge Children’s aims to provide a whole new way of caring for young people, integrating mental and physical healthcare, alongside world leading academic research, built on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
With a £100million of public funding committed to the project by Health Secretary Matt Hancock in 2018, Cambridge Children’s is a partnership between two leading NHS trusts - Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH), and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT) - and the University of Cambridge (UoC).
Embedding genomic and psychological research alongside clinical expertise in physical and mental child health, Cambridge Children’s will be a brand new state-of-the-art hospital designed to take care of the whole child, not just their illness.
A fundraising campaign will be announced in spring, to raise £100 million in philanthropy for this visionary hospital. It will be a beacon of biomedical expertise that benefits children and young people across the East of England as well as nationally and internationally.
Turner & Townsend, who will deliver project management, design team management, stakeholder management and cost management services, lead a unique design team for the hospital:
- Hawkins\Brown architects bring expertise in clinical research and the UK healthcare sector
- White Arkitekter brings global healthcare experience including recently delivering the Queen Silvia Children’s Hospital in Sweden
- Ramboll will provide all engineering services
- MJ Medical bring international healthcare planning expertise
The first job of the project design team will be to meet with staff at CPFT, CUH and UoC, as well as patients, their families and carers, to involve them in co-designing and co-producing the new hospital and models of care.
Alex White, Project Director for Cambridge Children’s, said: “We are so pleased to welcome Turner & Townsend and their team on board to help us deliver this ambitious project. They bring a team of global leaders in their fields, who will work with us to build a new type of children’s hospital – one which treats the whole child, putting them at the centre of everything we do.”
Alisha, aged 15, member of Cambridge Children’s Network, and on a panel of young people who met the shortlisted design teams, said: “I am really pleased and delighted to hear the news that Turner & Townsend have been chosen as the successful project design team. The amazing image they created following our Zoom call with them really shows they listened to our ideas and took on board everything that we think is important. I think they will be really good for Cambridge Children's Hospital project."
Clinton Green, Director of Healthcare project management at Turner & Townsend, said: “Cambridge Children’s Hospital will be a world leading facility for healthcare and clinical research and the combined experience of the design team is well matched for the bold ambition of this project. It is a huge privilege to have been appointed and we are looking forward to getting started and working with the entire project team.”
Oliver Milton, Partner for Hawkins\Brown, stated: “Cambridge Children’s Hospital project represents an opportunity to consider a whole new approach to healthcare for young people – focused on the mind as well as the body – with research embedded alongside the clinical facilities. It is strong design team, and working alongside White Arkitekter is a great opportunity to combine their global expertise in healthcare with Hawkins\Brown’s UK track record in healthcare and research buildings.”
Cambridge MP Daniel Zeichner said: "I welcome the appointment of a Design Team as the next stage in establishing a world-class children’s facility for the region. Clearly this announcement comes at a time of unprecedented pressure on our NHS but doctors in paediatric care have long been pressing for a specialist Children’s Hospital. This will be good for Cambridge and the health of many young people."