Workers start to convert the Glasgow SEC into NHS Louisa Jordan
More than 400 construction workers for firms including main contractors Balfour Beatty, Kier, Roberston and Graham are building a new temporary coronavirus hospital in Glasgow.
Work has begun at the NHS Louisa Jordan hospital in the Scottish Events Campus (SEC) Glasgow. The hospital is named after the Scottish nurse who died aged 36 in 1915 while caring for wounded soldiers in Serbia in the height of a typhus outbreak.
The contractors are working alongside nearly 150 NHS Scotland clinicians and operational staff to build the new facility, which will provide an initial 300 beds.
Health secretary Jeane Freeman said: “I want to send my sincere thanks to the many clinical, operational and construction staff who have been on site at the SEC to construct this new NHS Scotland hospital.
“They are working together, under exceptional circumstances, to deliver a clinically safe and fit for purpose hospital that if required, will provide extra capacity for NHS Scotland.”
Elliot Robertson, chief executive, Robertson Group, said: “As part of the assembled team responsible for the delivery of the NHS Louisa Jordan in the SEC Glasgow, we are committed to ensuring the delivery of the best facilities to meet the timescales. Our wealth of experience in the healthcare sector means that we are perfectly placed to assist the NHS in providing this national facility. We are ensuring the safety of the workers on the project by implementing stringent health and safety procedures reflecting the additional social distancing requirements required in respect of covid-19.
“Like the rest of Scotland we are hopeful that the facility will not be required, but will be doing all that we can, to make sure that the NHS can continue to deliver first class services in their fight against covid-19.”
