Hervey Bay Hospital $40m expansion delayed 18 months due to construction market conditions
A multimillion-dollar hospital expansion has been delayed at least 1½ years because the government couldn’t find a contractor to build it.
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A multimillion-dollar hospital expansion has been delayed at least 1½ years because the government couldn’t find a contractor to build it.
The $40m Hervey Bay Hospital expansion project was meant to add 35 beds and a new rooftop helipad to the facility by November.
But new tender documents obtained by The Courier-Mail reveal the project — in the ultra-marginal Labor-held electorate of Hervey Bay — now won’t be ready until at least May 2026.
Queensland Health has blamed extraordinary market conditions and a shortage of skilled labour for the delay, in a realisation of warnings previously made by a peak national infrastructure body.
Infrastructure Partnerships Australia had warned the state government’s ambitious $10bn hospital expansion program could be crippled by delays and cost blowouts due to labour shortages and a workload clash with other key infrastructure projects.
Health Minister Shannon Fentiman, alongside Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service boss Debbie Carroll, last November announced tenders for the $40m Hervey Bay hospital expansion were now open.
But it can be revealed the process found no suitable bidders, prompting the government to reissue the tender this month.
A Queensland Health spokeswoman said: “Factors such as extraordinary market conditions and shortages of skilled labour have impacted the Hervey Bay Hospital expansion project.”
Queensland Health, asked if other projects in its infrastructure program had been impacted, said it was not unusual for tenders to be reissued due to global challenges impacting the construction sector.
Ms Fentiman’s office said a $14m project to deliver a new 24-bed “modular ward” for Hervey Bay Hospital was not part of the delayed expansion.
Construction of the ward — which will take place off-site — will be undertaken by Hutchinson Builders and be delivered by early 2025.
Opposition health spokeswoman Ros Bates said the delay in Hervey Bay was further proof Queensland’s health crisis was getting worse the longer the state Labor government was in power.
“Queensland needs more hospital beds, and Labor cannot be trusted to deliver them,” she said.
“This is yet another secret blowout on a hospital project that Labor has tried to hide, meaning longer health waiting lists and more ambulance ramping blowouts for Queenslanders.”
It was revealed earlier this year at least a dozen of the government’s signature major health projects had been delayed up to 2½ years or hit with cost blowouts.
Labor holds the seat of Hervey Bay with a margin of just 2 per cent, clinching the seat in the 2020 state election after a mammoth 11.2 per cent swing triggered by support for then premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s tough Covid-19 control measures.
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