Contractors Balfour Beatty, Brookfield Europe and Laing O’Rourke are all in the running for the £500m job to redevelop the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow

Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS confirmed that the three contractors had been the only ones to pre-qualify for the tender process for the job to build a 1,000-bed adult hospital and 240-bed children’s hospital.

Glasgow NHS sent out tender documents for the scheme on 1 May. The build project will ultimately see 160,000m2 of hospital accommodation produced with a value of £500m-550m, according to the NHS.

Final designs are due from bidders in October this year after a competitive dialogue process, with the final choice of contractor to be made in November. The final terms of the contract, including schedule milestones, will be based on the preferred contractor’s final tender response.

Both Balfour Beatty and Laing O’Rourke are being tipped by insiders as favourites for the job, which is one of the largest health sector contracts to be let this year. Beatty recently won a massive £370m health project in Dallas, Texas to redevelop the Parkland Health and Hospital System.