The €1.1 billion Etlik Integrated Healthcare Campus public-private partnership (PPP) project in Ankara, Turkey, set to be one of the world’s largest hospital campuses once built – providing 3,577 beds across over 1 million m2 – has successfully reached financial close.
Mott MacDonald is lenders’ technical and environmental advisor for the development, and will now provide construction and operational monitoring services.
The complex, made up of a main core structure and six towers, will comprise a general hospital and specialist units for cardiovascular surgery, orthopaedics, and neurological sciences, paediatrics, women’s health and gynaecology, oncology, physical treatment and rehabilitation, and high-security forensic psychiatry, as well as a dedicated area for diagnosis and treatment.
Mott MacDonald’s due diligence during the project’s financing stage included reviewing potential technical issues and commercial implications arising from the project agreement and schedules. The consultancy also appraised the stakeholders’ competence, track record and capabilities, as well as the design solution, construction planning, planned service delivery, capital and operating expenditure, lifecycle costing, and the payment mechanism.
Burak Sencer, Mott MacDonald’s country manager for Turkey, said: “Etlik is the sixth health campus PPP project in Turkey we have been involved in to reach financial close. Mott MacDonald is technical advisor on nine projects in the overall programme, which reaffirms our position as the pre-eminent lenders’ technical advisor in global PPP markets.”
Keith Mitchell, Mott MacDonald’s project director, added: “This project’s sheer scale, and the tight deadlines to deliver the financing and achieve financial close, were a test of our due diligence expertise. However we overcame these challenges through excellent collaboration between our PPP transaction advisory experts in the UK and Turkey, who will now go on to lead our construction monitoring activities.”
Construction of the Etlik campus has already begun – the contractor is a joint venture between Astaldi and Turkerler – and is expected to take up to three and a half years, followed by a 24-year operating term. Mott MacDonald says Turkey’s Ministry of Health has identified a need for a further 95,000 additional hospital beds by 2023, requiring an estimated £9.5 bn private sector investment ‘to deliver a large proportion of the capacity required’.
As reported in the company’s own magazine, Momentum, several of the major Turkish healthcare schemes already ongoing have achieved financial close, with 16 integrated healthcare campuses at preferred bidder stage, and early stage construction work having commenced on five. One of the projects, the Bilkent Integrated Healthcare Campus in Ankara, will have 3,660 beds, making it one of the world’s largest hospitals. Several others will have over 3,000 beds.
