“On the one yard line”: Glen Campus on track
With all the media attention surrounding the new hospital at the Glen site, we would like to offer our donors some insight into the progress we are making toward the building of the new Royal Victoria Hospital.  The interest and support that we have had from our community is inspirational, and so we’d like to take this forum to answer some questions that are raised to us regularly.

As most of you know by now, the two consortiums bidding on the construction of the new hospital on the Glen yards submitted their proposals in August.  Hundreds of people worked around the clock in order to be able to responsibly deliver a confident decision by December 3rd.  The MUHC was able to keep their self-imposed deadline regarding the Redevelopment Project, in successfully choosing a winning consortium by December 3, 2009. As you likely know by now, the government – while reiterating their commitment to move forward with the construction on the Glen Campus – erred on the side of extreme caution by requesting that the evaluation process be reopened for another 60 days to give the two consortiums a chance to adhere to the original budget.  However, the government conceded that the budget with which they were given to work had been established in 2006 and not modified to reflect inflation, and so agreed to increase the budget to $1.34 billion.

The two consortiums respected this request and re-submitted their adjusted bids for the March 15th deadline. The MUHC Clinical Advisory Board has reviewed the proposals and they are now in the hands of the government. The government is expected to make an announcement in the very near future, following which, a 90-day financial closure period will be the final step before the beginning of construction (expected in late summer).