Tallinn scraps hospital design contract after spending €3 million
Design work on the planned Lasnamäe medical campus has been terminated at a cost of almost €3 million, with a lack of clear funding from the state cited as the reason.
Tallinn Hospital, the umbrella organization overseeing the capital's city-owned hospitals, terminated the design contract when it was a little more than 10 percent completed.
The primary reason for terminating the contract was the lack of a clear financing model and the absence of state funding, the City of Tallinn press service noted.
Tallinn Hospital has paid the designers the final €835,000 installment, bringing the total paid to the designers for work done to nearly €3 million.
"Regardless of the termination of the design contract, the consolidation process of Tallinn Hospital will go on. As part of this process, we also aim to render the estimated cost of the medical campus more realistic. Our goal is to prepare an investment plan for the construction of a medical campus which is feasible, sustainable, and focused on patients' interests," said Tallinn Hospital (Tallinna Haigla) CEO Arkadi Popov.
Mayor of Tallinn Peeter Raudsepp said the national government has stated it cannot envisage the new medical campus going ahead as being viable, at least at an estimated construction cost of approximately €1 billion.
"As a result, there was no alternative but to terminate the design contract. Naturally, the designer must be paid for the work that has been completed, but under the current circumstances it is reasonable to direct the city's resources toward solutions whose implementation is more certain and whose impact on residents is more immediate," Raudsepp said.
The City of Tallinn has paid €2.9 million for the design work in total. The final installment was based on Tallinn Hospital experts' assessment that the designers, OÜ Sirkel & Mall and Polish firm Industria Project Sp. z o.o., had completed 13.8 percent of the overall main design project.
The hospital's overall design contract, signed in 2025 by the previous Tallinn administration, came to €30 million.
The Tallinn Hospital project aims to merge all of the capital's hospitals by 2028. Up to now, their management has been dispersed, for instance between the West Tallinn and East Tallinn central hospitals.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Marko Tooming
