Engineering Infrastructure Replacement Program

The $20 million Engineering Infrastructure Replacement Program provides Victorian Government funding to upgrade or replace prioritised highest critical risk capital essential engineering infrastructure for acute services in public hospitals.

Examples include:

• chillers
• fire detection systems
• alarm systems
• replacement water mains.

Eligible health services will be advised when the next call for submission process starts.

For assistance regarding the funding program please contact MERP&EIRP@health.vic.gov.au.

Eligibility

The Engineering Infrastructure Replacement Program is available to eligible Victorian public hospitals for acute services and includes two components:

1. Specific-purpose capital grants are allocated to metropolitan and regional health services to replace in-scope critical at-risk engineering infrastructure valued at up to $300,000 (excluding GST). The grants can also be used to replace engineering infrastructure greater than $300,000 (excluding GST) if the health service considers it to be the highest risk of all the outstanding in-scope assets.
2. The High Value Statewide Replacement Fund is available for in-scope single items over $300,000 (excluding GST) that carry high risk in terms of service provision. The fund is managed via a bid-based submission process through which health services submit bids. The assessments, prioritisation and allocations consider a whole-of-system perspective and are prioritised to highest critical risk scores against set criteria.

Health service investments are accountable to asset plans, must maximise value-for-money procurement and must be consistent with government policies, practices, and asset management frameworks.

The 2022-23 funding round adopted a direct allocation process for the High Value Statewide Replacement Fund component. Funding was provided to the highest ranked critical risk items that were supported in principle in 2021-22, but were unable to be funded in that round.

Criteria

Submissions for the High Value Statewide Replacement Fund are restricted to the replacement of engineering infrastructure items that sustain existing acute services in Victorian public hospitals and that replace qualifying highest priority critical existing assets that pose an unacceptable and immediate threat to patient/healthcare worker safety.

Submissions should ensure the requests:

• are in-scope
• are ‘project ready’
• are end of life
• are overdue and time-critical to be replaced/renewed
• are mission-critical to service delivery or direct life safety
• cannot reliably be undertaken by any other means and have asset and service support shortfalls that cannot be reasonably or acceptably addressed via maintenance
• are major technical upgrades to existing imaging equipment to extend effective life and where the clinical benefits and extension of effective life are demonstrated
• represent a major breach in mandatory legislative and statutory requirements
• need due consideration by the programs because without replacement they
  • will critically and unequivocally impair health service delivery
  • present a strong likelihood of asset and service failure, leading to an untenable gap in business continuity
  • represent a major breach in mandatory legislative and statutory requirements.

Assessment

Submissions are assessed against an established set of criteria and priority will be given to submissions that address critical risk (patient safety, healthcare worker safety, service availability) and service level weighting in accordance with Medical Equipment Asset Management Framework.

More information

Refer to the 2021-22 Engineering Infrastructure and Medical Equipment Replacement Program – Guidelines in the downloads section below or via the health.vic website for the following information:

• list of in-scope replacement assets
• ineligible or excluded items
• conditions of funding.

It is vital that our hospitals have access to the latest developments in engineering infrastructure and technology. This program helps improve efficiency and reliability of our public hospitals, and reduce risk to patients, healthcare worker safety and service availability.

The Engineering Infrastructure Replacement Program aims to:

• support health services to manage risk and to maintain patient safety, healthcare worker safety, service availability / business continuity and avert unacceptable clinical service interruptions or failures
• enable qualifying at-risk critical engineering infrastructure due or overdue for replacement to be replaced in a timely and prioritised way, consistent with statewide strategic and service plans, service delivery needs and asset management plans
• sustain at-risk assets that provide essential capacity for delivering responsive and appropriate acute clinical services across Victorian public hospitals
• provide a safety net to minimise whole-of-system risks
• devolve a level of capital funding to health services’ management, making prioritising the replacement of at-risk assets more flexible, reducing administrative burden, and helping to improve asset management
• help health services to implement effective asset management that aligns with existing government frameworks and policies
• develop and implement multi-year essential engineering infrastructure asset management plans for health services consistent with their role in the statewide context and appropriate to the asset management requirements of the health service concerned.

Projects funded through the Victorian Government’s Engineering Infrastructure Replacement Program are administered by the Victorian Health Building Authority. These projects are delivered by the public funded health service provider.