When it was established that the structures of A&E were too weak to take any further weight, the government had to shift the location of its original 68-bed, two-floor project to another site on the hospital grounds at Tal-Qroqq, where construction works are under way. Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi

Remedial works needed to fix the structural problems plaguing the entire Mater Dei Hospital are estimated to cost about €30 million, Times of Malta has learnt.

The multinational engineering firm, Arup, entrusted with taking an X-ray of the state hospital, has concluded that “the structure’s durability is at risk due to the quality of concrete”.

The government has taken short-term measures to prop up the dangerous structure – and there is no imminent danger of collapse – but Arup recommends permanent remedial action, which will see costs skyrocket.

The government will be exploring every option to try to recoup some of the expenses, once the inquiry indicates who was responsible for the colossal contractual and quality control shortcomings.

The board of inquiry, chaired by Judge Philip Sciberras, tasked with analysing the legal liability of parties involved in the hospital’s construction, is expected to submit its findings to Health Minister Konrad Mizzi in the coming days. The details of the cost, the timeline of works and mitigation measures needed will be announced during a press conference today, when two Arup representatives will give a rundown of the findings.

Arup, an independent firm based in London, was appointed by the government last September after it emerged that the hospital’s Accident and Emergency Department could not take the weight of two additional floors. This newspaper had broken the news in August that pavements were stronger than some concrete structures supporting A&E, throwing the government’s plan to build two wards above it out of sync.

The mix used to build the hospital was simply inviting trouble

Since then, the government has had to shift the location of its original 68-bed, two-floor project to another site on the hospital grounds at Tal-Qroqq. Arup – which has 50 years experience in architecture and civil engineering projects – was tasked with reviewing A&E’s weak concrete columns, the rest of the structures across the entire hospital and the new oncology hospital.

While the oncology hospital got a clean bill of health, the same cannot be said of structures in several areas of Mater Dei, which cost €600 million and took almost 15 years to complete.

Finally inaugurated in June 2007, its development was riddled with accountability and management problems. The contract for the hospital’s construction had been awarded to a consortium that included Swedish construction giant Skanska, together with Maltese developers Blokrete and Devlands.

Former prime minister Alfred Sant, who was highly critical of the project, recently said: “The project stank from the very beginning all the way through. This was an issue of contracting and oversight.”

Arup will today reveal that although concrete in Malta should only contain hard rock aggregate (tal-qawwi), the mix used to build the hospital contained soft globigerina limestone aggregate (tal-franka), which architects explained was simply “inviting trouble”.

This meant that although the original cube strength of the hospital’s entire structures should have hit the grade of C30, various tests conducted on each column confirmed the concrete was not homogenous and the characteristic cube strength of the A&E structures was a measly C18.

Basically, the strength of 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 building was found deficient in several areas under seismic loads

Also, further tests have exposed how the shoddy workmanship at A&E led to a situation where concrete was generally porous, accelerating the process of corrosion (carbonation). In some cases, the concrete used in the columns at A&E – the worst-affected area – had eroded “in excess of 40mm” compared to 20mm in columns of a similar age, while a total of 21 columns and 25 beams do not comply with the criteria.

The situation across the entire hospital is slightly better than A&E, but it is still not in good physical shape. Arup has established that all the blocks have a concrete quality below C30. The concrete structures in Block D – where the colour-coded hospital wards are – have a characteristic cube strength of C23, which is still substantially lower than the established strength of C30.

Arup also carried out seismic tests to assess the hospital’s strength to withstand a strong earthquake. Mater Dei was supposedly the only public building specifically constructed to resist earthquakes. The result was that the “building was found deficient in several areas under seismic loads”.

The government will now be embarking on permanent remedial works across the entire hospital under Arup’s supervision.