May the 4th, 2025 – A Croatian consortium consisting of some well known names are set to construct the National Children’s Hospital.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Sinisa Malus writes, a Croatian consortium of companies including the likes of Kamgrad, ING-GRAD, Radnik and ZDL Arhitekti has been awarded the contract to design and build the first phase of the National Children’s Hospital (NDB) in Blato, Zagreb. The aforementioned combination of enterprises won the bid even though their bid was significantly more expensive than that of the Turkish consortium.
The aforementioned Croatian consortium offered a price of 189.99 million euros excluding VAT (237.5 million euros including VAT), while the Turkish companies CCN Altyapı Yatırımları, CCN Yatırım Holding and CCN International offered 168.70 million euros excluding VAT (210.88 million euros including VAT).
The estimated value of the public procurement stood at 190 million euros excluding VAT. Despite the more favourable price, the Turkish bidders lost key points due to incomplete documentation. The construction site will, as is expected and typical, be closely monitored by expert supervision, and the public procurement procedure has also just been launched.
The work of vigilant monitoring and ensuring timely execution of services is estimated to total 4.2 million euros. Although the area will be revitalised by the new National Children’s Hospital, the concrete skeleton of the somewhat ominous looking University Hospital will not become a thing of the past in the first phase of the works at least.
The aforementioned Turkish companies now have the opportunity to appeal to the State Commission for the Control of Public Procurement Procedures. It’s yet to be seen whether or not they will bother to launch any sort of legal proceedings.
If there is no appeal, the Croatian consortium will have a period of one year to prepare the main and detailed design and supplement the building permit. The construction work itself will last 38 months, and according to the plans of the Health Ministry as things stand, the construction of the first phase should begin in 2026. It should then completed in the spring of 2029, when the hospital is actually expected to open.
The new National Children’s Hospital, whose conceptual study was prepared by the UPI2M company, will span a total area of 44,788 square metres in the first phase, with a basement-ground floor-storey layout with a maximum floor area of 111×112 metres. It is expected to boast a total of 481 hospital beds and an additional 300 beds in the day hospital.
A centre of excellence should be established at the future National Children’s Hospital by grouping capacities from existing hospitals and departments of the Children’s Hospital Clinic in Klaićeva, the paediatric department of the Sestre milosrdnice Clinical Hospital, the psychiatry department for children and adolescents of the Kukuljevićeva Special Hospital, as well as specialised neuropaediatrics and rehabilitation of the Goljak Special Hospital.
All of the building’s energy (up to 84 percent of it to be precise) will come from renewable sources. It will partly from solar sources, and largely from geothermal sources, which are abundant in the location where the hospital will be built, and for which a private company has a concession.
As a reminder, the idea and initial plans behind the National Children’s Hospital were born back during the 1970s, and the tender was won by the Slovenian design company Biro 71. That company also designed the unusual looking clinical hospital in Dubrava, which was completed in 1988. The work on the University Hospital was accompanied by five-year contributions, and the complex for more than three thousand employees was supposed to be completed back in 1990. However, war broke out and the realised project never saw the light of day.
