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How a centralised panel is replacing one-off hospital procurement.
Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora has established a National Panel of Major Project Delivery Partners, marking a shift in how major hospital projects are procured and delivered across the country.
The panel brings together four construction consortia — Naylor Love Health Hub, Hawkins Health Partnership, Southbase | Built Joint Venture, and BESIX Watpac NZ — and will be used to appoint delivery partners across major health projects. The aim is to move away from one-off tenders towards a more consistent, program-based approach that standardises delivery, reduces cost, and improves project timelines.
The initiative forms part of Health New Zealand’s Building Hospitals Better programme, which is focused on delivering health infrastructure faster and with greater consistency by leveraging national scale and repeatable design systems.
Standardisation, modular hospitals and repeatable design
A central feature of the panel is the shift towards standardised hospital design and delivery. Historically, projects were developed by separate District Health Boards as bespoke builds, often resulting in inconsistent design outcomes and extended delivery timeframes.
Under the new model, hospital infrastructure is being treated as part of a coordinated national programme. Standardised clinical layouts, repeatable room templates, and modular “kit of parts” systems are expected to support more efficient design and construction processes. This approach allows elements to be designed once and applied across multiple sites, reducing rework and improving delivery certainty.
Modern Methods of Construction, including modular and offsite approaches, are also embedded in the strategy. By designing for assembly rather than traditional onsite construction, Health New Zealand is aiming to shorten build programmes, improve quality control, and reduce disruption within operational hospital environments.
Procurement reform and scaled delivery
The panel removes the inefficiency of treating each hospital as a standalone job. By locking in delivery partners, standardising design inputs, and reusing proven layouts, Health New Zealand can cut procurement time, reduce design churn, and deploy modular systems at scale rather than on a project-by-project basis.
In practice, this restructures delivery into a continuous pipeline. Pre-qualified teams, aligned commercial frameworks, and established design standards allow earlier contractor involvement, faster mobilisation, and reduced duplication across projects. The result is a procurement model that prioritises throughput and consistency, rather than restarting design and tender processes for each new hospital.
The panel structure also addresses industry capacity constraints. A visible pipeline of work provides greater certainty for contractors and supply chains, supporting long-term employment and enabling investment in skills, digital tools, and offsite manufacturing capability. Over time, this continuity is expected to compound productivity gains across the sector while improving cost control and delivery performance.
Find New Zealand’s Building Better Hospital explanation (pdf) HERE
