A major project delivered right on time – success at Charleroi Hospital
Reading time: 3 min
Construction of the new site for the Grand Hôpital de Charleroi in Belgium is one of those rare hospital projects to have been completed on schedule. Cegelec Belgium takes the credit for several technical batches on this large-scale project.
©Grand Hôpital de Charleroi
Operations to relocate from the Grand Hôpital de Charleroi (GHdC) to the Les Viviers Hospital Centre began in June 2024 with the opening of the dental centre, pharmacy and all hospital administrative services. The new infrastructure will consolidate almost all services from the group’s five former sites in one location. The centre’s new occupants moved in gradually in the lead-up to its opening on 25 November 2024.
Requiring four years of works, this is one of the largest hospitals built in Wallonia in the past 20 years. With total floor area of 154,000 sq. metres, the complex combines five sites, 960 beds and 27 operating theatres. No hospital project had previously met such tight deadlines while managing to incorporate the modifications and constraints inherent in a project of this nature, arising from things such as regulations, materials costs, stakeholder input or customer requests.
A collective partnership
Cegelec Belgium (VINCI Energies) represented the consortium on a range of technical batches: hospital HVAC, electrical engineering, and later, the clean rooms batch. The business unit was fully aware of the scale of the challenge. “First, we had to address issues caused by the war in Ukraine and in the aftermath of Covid-19, which included rising prices, forcing us into daily battles to contain our costs,” says Benoît Gouverneur, Business Development Manager at Cegelec Belgique.
“Meeting the delivery date was the end result of a series of successes.”
Organisationally, right from the tender stage, Cegelec Belgium was seeking out partners to form a consortium: “Right at the start of the project, we had to define everyone’s role from a legal, administrative and technical perspective,” says Benoît Gouverneur. “Weekly feedback in internal meetings between partners was essential to be able to speak to our shared customer with one voice. Meeting the delivery date was also the end result of a series of successes built on strong collaboration between all project stakeholders: the project owner, architects, design teams and contractors.”
An experienced delivery team
On the ground, Cegelec Belgium was able to offer solutions tailored to the requirements of such a large project. “For every technical batch, we assigned an experienced delivery team of engineers and site personnel, overseen by a project manager specialising in hospital projects,” says the Business Development Manager.
To optimise its services and maximise its responsiveness, Cegelec Belgium established a monthly project review process, contract remuneration based on project duration, and a BIM team with strong experience in the hospital environment to ensure coordination between all the technical batches.
“In addition to daily monitoring of project progress by our works managers, we set up qualitative monitoring of our work through self-checking procedures during critical phases, such as the sealing of bulkheads and false ceilings.”
05/21/2025
