Page 3498 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 12 September 2017
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proactive work ACT Health has undertaken to comprehensively assess its asset base and to identify priority maintenance, remediation and upgrade projects.
The intent of UMAHA, as the name suggests, is to upgrade and maintain ACT Health assets. Upgrading and maintaining assets includes responding to risks identified through information gathering and reports, such as the AECOM report.
The ACT community would expect no less of ACT Health than to prioritise those highest ranked risks, and that is exactly what has occurred. It is certainly not unusual for a condition report to be undertaken, for it to reveal issues requiring attention and for government to prioritise funding to respond to those issues appropriately.
The AECOM report identified 583 risk-rated items comprising four items with an extreme risk rating and 143 items with a high risk rating. The remainder were ranked medium or low. Risks rated extreme or high, which had not been otherwise addressed through separate projects, were therefore included within the scope of the UMAHA appropriation.
Of the four extreme risks, two were funded outside or partly outside of the UMAHA appropriation. Those include the helipad, which was funded through ACT Health’s clinical service redevelopment phase 3 appropriation, and the gas meter works, which are joint funded, with the continuity of health services plan—essential infrastructure project undertaking the enabling works and enclosure and the UMAHA appropriation funding the cost of the replacement meter sets.
Additionally, medium and low risk items associated with the deferment of the Canberra Hospital buildings 2 and 3 redevelopment were included within the UMAHA appropriation. This resulted in 149 items being included in the final approved initiative being delivered across three financial years from 2016-17 to 2018-19.
The program of works has been grouped according to trade, size or location to create a series of streamlined work packages. This logical packaging assisted in the streamlining of investigative survey works to define the scope, output specifications and creation of construction packages.
The UMAHA program of works is rightly designed to minimise any potential risks to the interruption of the delivery of health services and to deliver essential remedial works on a planned basis. These objectives are closely aligned with the ACT government policies around sustainable delivery of health services.
As I am sure you can appreciate, Madam Speaker, the nature of health service delivery and associated infrastructure is complex. Health service delivery cannot simply be stopped for a number of hours to allow for works to be undertaken. Many of the works packages require specialist skills and expertise, as well as detailed coordination, design and investigation, to determine a works program. Shutdown planning and clinical stakeholder engagement are a crucial part of the project delivery phase.
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