Documents show the $3.2bn new Women and Children’s Hospital faces further delays and more cost blowouts

Set to be Australia’s most expensive building – beating out the $2.4bn RAH – the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital faces further delays and cost blowouts despite official statements.

Australia’s most expensive building, the $3.2bn new Women’s and Children’s Hospital, faces a three-year delay, confidential documents show.

The documents obtained by The Advertiser show the nWCH now won’t open until 2033-34.

This is despite its official website continuing to insist it anticipates construction to be finished “around 2030-31.”

Based on previous estimates of a $10m a month cost of any delay, a cost blowout could run to $360m if a full three-year delay was realised.

But officials now say it is all “an error” and all is well.

The Women’s and Children’s Health Network (WCHN) governing board was given an update from the executive lead of the project team which says “full completion (is) projected by 2033-34.”

However, after being questioned by The Advertiser, WCHN chief executive Rebecca Graham rejected the information given to the board and confirmed in their minutes.

“The new Women’s and Children’s Hospital completion date remains 2030-31,” Ms Graham said in a one line statement.

Documents seen by The Advertiser show the nWCH now won’t open until 2033—2034. Picture: Supplied

The nWCH will outrank the $2.3bn Royal Adelaide Hospital on Australia’s most expensive build list.

Opposition Leader Vincent Tarzia said the construction and cost blowout was concerning.

“There are serious question marks hanging over the details of the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital and this government has been intent on pulling the wool over South Australians’ eyes,” he said.

“If the government isn’t upfront about the delivery date what else are they hiding?”

“This project is critically important for the future of our health system and the government has to be open.

“Labor presided over the major cost and time blowouts with the new Royal Adelaide Hospital and now it appears history is repeating itself.

New Women’s and Children’s Hospital Master Plan

“Labor started the process of building a new WCH in 2013, meaning it will be almost 20 years for this project to come to fruition.

“Toddlers today will be teenagers before they can walk through the doors.”

Health Minister Chris Picton said there was no change to the completion date of the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital and that it was on track for completion in 2030-31.

“Vincent Tarzia should remember it was Steven Marshall who broke his promise to build the new hospital by 2024,” he said.

“Our plan will deliver more hospital beds, compared to the previous Liberal plans which would have included only one extra overnight bed.”

The former Weatherill government once anticipated a new WCH to open by 2023 but repeated plans by Labor and Liberal governments have seen the estimated costs soar, and timelines blow out – as happened with the $2.4bn RAH, originally projected to cost $1.7bn.

Premier Peter Malinauskas has previously noted: “Anyone who has renovated a kitchen or a bathroom knows it never goes perfectly.

“Well, times that by a billion and you start to get the complexity of a project this size and scale.”

Questioned in parliament in March on specific costs and timelines, Mr Chris Picton declined to give dollar or date figures, saying detailed work was still under way, there was more consultation needed and “more contracting to do with our contractors”.

Among recent milestones listed by SA Health on the hospital’s timeline are the April 2024 Aboriginal smoking ceremony “to cleanse and heal the ground” and in February 2025 the “first significant concrete pour on the multistorey car park.”

The nWCH will have 414 overnight beds, 56 more than the current WCH, plus a 20-bed future expansion capacity, as well as a 1300-space carpark.

The new delays to the project come as it was revealed the Women’s and Children’s Hospital’s troubled pediatric intensive care unit will shut for at least three months, with the budget for the plan also blowing out after a $20m upgrade was announced in 2023.

In 2018 it was revealed the cost of building the new Royal Adelaide Hospital had blown out to $2.44bn, according to a report from the state’s financial watchdog.

Then auditor-general Andrew Richardson revealed the cost increase in what was previously a $2.3bn project, attributing it to “project delays and additional costs for transition, modifications and contamination remediation”.

The project was delivered under a public-private partnership model which included the builders accepting substantial amounts of the risk in cases of construction cost overruns, with taxpayers handing over about $1m a day for the next three decades to ensure building maintenance and delivery of some services such as cleaning and catering.

The new RAH became the subject of legal wrangling over the blowouts.

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Women’s and Children’s pediatric intensive care blowout

The Women’s and Children’s Hospital troubled pediatric intensive care unit will shut for at least three months and staff will have to make do in a new location with three less beds.

The Advertiser understands the budget for the plan has also blown out after a $20m upgrade was announced in 2023 — this followed revelations by The Advertiser the unit had lost its teaching accreditation following a scathing assessment by the College of Intensive Care Medicine which found it overcrowded, understaffed and obsolete.

Sick children fighting for life were being left without a doctor on site, the devastating report exposing multiple failures in the system found.

The sole positive aspect cited by the College of Intensive Care Medicine was the PICU’s “motivated but exhausted medical and nursing staff”.

The report also criticised putting adult obstetric patients in the PICU which it labelled a “difficult and historic issue”, saying “while keeping families together is an admirable principle, children and adults should not be competing for the same scarce resources … when the current pediatric resources are stretched beyond capacity”.

The unit has regained its accreditation but the huge upgrade now appears linked to faulty oxygen lines needed for patients.

These were embedded in weight bearing columns which now need to be removed in a massive renovation for the ageing hospital which is destined to be decommissioned in about a decade.

The PICU will close for about three months at the end of the year for the work to be done, a board meeting of the WCHN was told.

The unit is advertised as having 13 beds and will move to a makeshift home with 10 beds.

A project working group has been established and the board anticipates “significant operational challenges” as they deal with the issue.

Opposition leader Vincent Tarzia said renovations would impact critically ill children.

“Having the sickest children in the state cared for in a makeshift ward is a worrying side-effect of this government’s mismanagement of the new WCH project,” Mr Tarzia said.

“The current hospital is clearly no longer fit for purpose and the hardworking doctors and nurses, sick children and their families deserve more than just Band-Aid solutions.”

Originally published as Documents show the $3.2bn new Women and Children’s Hospital faces further delays and more cost blowouts