A Balfour Beatty-led consortium has beaten off a Bovis Lend Lease team to win preferred bidder status on a £521m hospital PFI in Birmingham.

The 35-year deal, for the University Hospital Birmingham Trust and the Birmingham & Solihull Mental Health Trust, is due to reach financial close in March 2005. The scheme will include a new 1249-bed inpatient hospital, a 137-bed psychiatric hospital and teaching facility and two separate mental health facilities. The consortium includes Balfour Beatty service engineering arm Haden Young, AWG Construction Services.

The design team includes architects BDP and Nightingale Associates, structural highways and environmental consultant White Young Green and M&E engineers Hulley & Kirkwood and Couch Perry & Wilkes.