A multinational engineering firm is advising the government against building two additional floors on Mater Dei Hospital’s accident and emergency department because of weak structures.
Following initial discussions, Arup, an independent firm based in London, believes A&E cannot take the weight of two additional floors, The Sunday Times of Malta has learnt.
Arup – which has 50 years experience in architecture and civil engineering projects – has been appointed by the government to review the weak concrete columns at A&E, the rest of the structures across the entire hospital, as well as the oncology hospital that is still being built.
Arup is expected to hand in its final report to the government by February.
Last month this newspaper broke the news that pavements were stronger than some concrete structures supporting A&E, throwing the government’s plans to build two wards on top out of sync.
Initially, since no cracks were visible, the government’s decision to build adjacent, instead of on top, was questioned by experts who believed the columns could have easily been reinforced.
However, when contacted Health Minister Konrad Mizzi said architects’ advice and all the tests had indicated the building was not strong enough to take the two new wards of 68 beds. Arup’s initial evaluation backs this assessment.
Another stumbling block that arose, and which informed the government’s decision was the risk of losing the EU funds allocated for the wards – the project is estimated to cost €11.2 million, 85 per cent of which will be covered by the EU.
If the government had stalled the project until the inquiry was completed – Dr Mizzi hopes to have its conclusions in hand by the end of the year – the funds would have almost certainly been lost.
The 68-bed project, awarded to Attard Bros and Mekkanika in April, has to be finished by June, which is a very tight deadline, but Dr Mizzi is hopeful the targets will be met.
“We cannot afford to lose the EU funds and we are doing our utmost to ensure the June deadline is met. The contractors believe they can deliver within this timeframe,” he added.
Asked if the government would be reissuing the tender seeing that the project specifications had now changed, Dr Mizzi said the same contractors would be kept – the brief and the cost of the project had so far remained the same.
Talks were also under way with the planning authority, the contracts’ department as well as the EU funding directorate to ensure everything was in line.
Mepa permits green-lighting the project should be out by the beginning of November. Dr Mizzi added that the building was being designed in such a way that it could take additional floors in the future.
The setbacks had emerged when Attard Bros and Mekkanika carried out a stress test to ensure the building could take another two storeys.
But everybody was surprised when the first core stress test, which took at least 30 different samples, exposed a huge disparity – none of the samples taken hit the grade of C30, and in some instances the concrete was even lower than C15.
Basically, the strength of a concrete mix – which includes cement, sand and gravel – is measured in grades: C30 is very strong as it contains less gravel, while C15 is used for general purposes, such as pavements.
The stress tests were carried out by three different companies – Terracore and Solid Base in Malta, and Celtest in the UK.