Laing O’Rourke Sussex Cancer Centre: delivery and design notes for project teams
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Laing O’Rourke will start main construction this summer on the £250m, five-storey Sussex Cancer Centre at Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, following a 40‑week enabling works package that began in April 2024. The scheme, part of Wave 1 of the New Hospitals Programme and adjacent to Laing O’Rourke’s Louisa Martindale Building, will rely heavily on digital design and offsite manufacturing to control quality and reduce on-site disruption. Designed as a regional cancer hub, it is planned to open in 2029, tripling current capacity to treat around 60,000 patients a year.
Technical Brief
- Laing O’Rourke continues as main contractor, enabling direct interface with its previous hospital build on site.
- New build replaces legacy cancer facilities on the Royal Sussex County Hospital campus deemed outdated by operators.
- Laing O’Rourke plans extensive offsite manufacture via its integrated supply chain to reduce on-site construction duration.
- Digital design workflows will be used to coordinate clinical layouts and building services before fabrication and installation.
- Client team is targeting improved staff work environment and patient privacy through purpose-designed clinical accommodation.
Our Take
At £250m, the Sussex Cancer Centre sits at the upper end of hospital schemes in our Infrastructure coverage, signalling that Laing O’Rourke is being trusted with complex, high-value acute-care work under the New Hospitals Programme rather than just peripheral upgrades.
A 40‑week enabling works window on a constrained Brighton site suggests heavy reliance on offsite manufacture and tightly sequenced logistics, which aligns with Laing O’Rourke’s broader UK strategy of using its in‑house prefabrication capability to de‑risk urban healthcare builds.
Being part of Wave 1 of the New Hospitals Programme positions Royal Sussex County Hospital as a reference project for later waves; delivery performance here is likely to influence procurement appetite for similar multi‑storey cancer centres across other English regions in our database.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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