The city of Amersfoort in the Netherlands is getting a new hospital

Currently the Dutch city of Amersfoort has officially one hospital with a regional functionality for the surrounding villages and town: the Meander Medisch Centrum (Meander Medical Centre). Due to historical reason this regional hospital is located at more than four locations as it was created by a merger of two smaller hospitals in Amersfoort, the Elisabeth and the Ligtenberg as well as the hospital in Baarn and the hospital in Soest. These four locations serve up to 350.000 people in the "Eemland region" with 200 medical specialists and more than 3.000 professional staff (nurses and medical assistants).

Since the merger the four locations remained active although the cost benefits of a single locations were known to the board. They had to operate carefully however, as the Dutch healthcare market is not liberalised and depends on political decisions. Since a few years the Dutch political discourse is slowly favoring the market as beneficial to containing the expanding costs of healthcare. Thus, slowly the healthcare market is opening to liberal policies and as such more and more hospitals are activating long posponed plans to gain more efficiency and encourage innovation.

The Meander Medisch Centrum has entered into a cooperation agreement with the Dutch construction company Heijmans to jointly perpare the construction of the new hospital on the Maatweg in Amersfoort, the Netherlands:

 says Jan Kleijne, Chairman of Meander Medisch Centrum's Executive Board.

This project with the joint approach to contracting is considered innovative as it has not been done before by any hospital in the Netherlands. Also the design by Atelier Pro is considered innovative as Meander and Atelier Pro are making use of a three-demensional buildig information model. This model delivers the contracted parties with huge data files which can be used by both the architect and the constructor. All kinds of data, ranging from floor plans and cross sections to surfaces, quantities and dimensions. This allows the architect and constructor to apply changes and immediately see the results. This should result in time gains and the avoidans of costs of failure! The projectmanager is Stevens van Dijck, independent projectmanager.

As stated by the Dutch news radiostations BNR, Heijmans expects to sign the definite agreement in 2009 and finish the construction around 2012!