Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 16 January 2019
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health
National Children’s Hospital: National Paediatric Hospital Development Board
Mr. Tom Costello:
That is a fair question. One of the lessons learned concerns the complexity of mechanical and electrical services. There are 24 different systems across mechanical and electrical services from duct work to pipe work to medical gases and so on. In respect of the 5,500 km of cable, there are different sizes of cables and we have rates for all of them. As Mr. Pollock mentioned, in respect of a digital hospital, it is not just about having a socket on the wall, it is about how the cable is distributed within the building and back into the data centres and switch rooms after that. There was significant complexity involved that took two years to develop. We went out to tender in June 2016. We eventually had the mechanical and electrical design completed in mid-2018. An option we considered in 2015 was to go on the basis of completed design and then go to the market. We would have been going to market two years later at a time of high inflation.
No comments