Multiplex Completes $154M Australian Hospital

By Scott Baltic

Karratha Health Campus

Sydney-based international construction contractor Multiplex has finished work on Karratha Health Campus. The A$207 million (roughly $153.6 million) hospital in the Pilbara region of Western Australia has reportedly been completed on time and on budget.

“The new Karratha Health Campus … marks the biggest investment ever undertaken in a public hospital” in regional Western Australia, Multiplex’s Regional Managing Director Chris Palandri said in a prepared statement. The new facility, he added, is replacing the aging Nickol Bay Hospital. At more than 140,000 square feet, the 40-bed Karratha Health Campus is almost double the size of the latter facility.

The campus will bring together in one location double the number of emergency department bays, a new surgical center, a new maternity wing and delivery suites, and expanded outpatient facilities. Karratha’s remote location, more than 900 miles from Perth and in a sparsely populated region, also meant that a helipad was a must.

Because the Pilbara region faces extreme weather conditions, including severe cyclones, the Western Australia Country Health Service, which will operate the facility, specified that it should be capable of withstanding these. Construction used more than 360 tilt-up concrete panels, the heaviest one weighing 32 metric tons.

Busy at both ends of Oz

In March and at pretty much the opposite corner of Australia, Multiplex completed the $225 million, 314,600-square-foot Learning and Teaching Building at Monash University’s campus in Clayton, a suburb of Melbourne.

The four-story building, at the largest of Monash’s several campuses, also houses a regional transport interchange serving the tens of thousands of people who visit the campus each day.

Image courtesy of Multiplex