Countess of Chester RAAC replacement takes three awards, Waterman says

Waterman said on 8 October 2026 that the £110m Countess of Chester Hospital Women and Children's Building, for which it designed the mechanical and electrical services through the ProCure23 framework, has won three industry awards.

According to the consultancy, the building was named Project of the Year at the 2026 Government Property Awards and Most Sustainable Building Project at the Building Innovation Awards 2026. Local Authority Building Control (LABC) has also listed it as North West winner of Best Public or Community Building at its Building Excellence Awards 2026.

Waterman said the regional LABC win secures the project a place in the 2026 LABC Grand Finals. LABC confirmed the finals take place on Friday 22 January 2027; Waterman said the venue is Grosvenor House Hotel, London.

Richard Ward, Associate, Architecture at AHR, the project architect, said: "From the outset, we took a joined-up approach to reducing both embodied and operational carbon".

The project

The three-storey building replaces a 1970s facility and brings maternity, neonatal, paediatric and gynaecology services together, Waterman said. The consultancy described the scheme as the project team's response to the hospital's Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) problem. AHR said the NHS plans to remove RAAC from the public estate by 2035.

Waterman's project page says the building was delivered by Integrated Health Projects (IHP), a joint venture between VINCI Building and Sir Robert McAlpine, and that the facility opened in autumn 2025. The building was constructed on a live hospital campus, which Waterman said required close coordination between the Trust, NHS England, IHP, the design team and specialist supply chain partners to keep services running.

Waterman credits the project team as Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, NHS England, IHP, Waterman, AHR, Alan Johnston Partnership and Ecospheric. LABC's winner listing credits MHS Technical Solutions Ltd, IHP (Vinci Building UK), AHR and Countess of Chester Hospital, with Cheshire West & Chester Council as the local authority.

Sustainability

Waterman said the building is the first within NHS England to meet the sustainability requirements of the Net Zero Carbon Building Standard (NZCBS). AHR describes it as the first in England to be approved under the NHS Net Zero Building Standard. The building also achieved a BREEAM Excellent rating, according to Waterman.

Waterman said its building services strategy includes high-efficiency heat pumps, a 400 sq m photovoltaic array and an intelligent building management system. The electrical infrastructure includes a new high-voltage supply, N+1 transformers and a standby generator.

AHR said the building is fully electric in operation and achieved an air tightness rating of 2.4, beating the project target. The practice said low-carbon concrete was used for the piling and foundations to cut embodied carbon, and a post-tensioned frame and slab system reduced the materials needed. AHR's design extended the building from two to three storeys.

What happens next

LABC describes its Building Excellence Awards as the largest business-to-business awards in the building control sector. The Countess of Chester building will compete in the Grand Finals on 22 January 2027.