Multiplex – New Footscray Hospital – VBIS Accreditation
Background
Founded in 1962, Multiplex have developed a global reputation as being the most responsive and client focused partner in the industry that work to solve complex problems for clients. With a national presence in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, making Multiplex one of Australia’s largest private construction groups.
The Footscray and District Hospital was originally opened in 1953. Over the years, the hospital expanded and was renamed several times.
The New Footscray Hospital is the single largest health infrastructure investment in the State of Victoria, with a price tag of around AU$1.5 billion. Multiplex are working under a PPP (Public Private Partnership) contract, to build the new development.
Challenge
In such a large, complex build, significant asset data (information about equipment, systems and infrastructure) is generated that is critical to long‑term performance, cost control, safety, regulatory compliance, and facility operations.
Historically, health project deliver asset data in different formats, structures, naming conventions, and file types. This created inconsistency and made managing assets across Victoria's public health system inefficient and inconsistent.
VBIS (Virtual Buildings Information System) is an Australian standard / framework for classifying, tagging, and linking asset data in a consistent, structured way.
At the end of construction, Multiplex must hand over a huge amount of data to facility managers, health authorities, and maintenance teams. If that data already conforms to VBIS Standard classification, tagging, format etc., the handover becomes smoother, with less rework. It helps avoid delays in operations, confusion over asset identification, and supports quicker transitioning to facility management.
Opportunity
Multiplex worked with VBIS to ensure consistent and accurate data classification is applied to the maintainable engineering type assets in the Building Information Model across the project. The VBIS Standard classification has been applied to all model elements identified as maintainable assets that align to Victorian Health Building Authority’s (VHBA) Digital Engineering Framework.
Multiplex, has achieved VBIS Accreditation for the New Footscray Hospital which makes strong strategic, operational, and financial sense. It aligns with the complexity, scale, and long lifecycle of the hospital project; supports high performance in operations; reduces risk; and ensures that the asset data delivered at handover is reliable, usable, and future‑proof.
This signals to the government, stakeholders (such as health departments), clients, and the community that Multiplex takes data integrity, operational readiness, and long‑term asset performance seriously.
This level of consistency will support the on-going management of the facility by service provider as part of the PPP contract.
Why VBIS
The VHBA has stringent regulations in terms of safety, equipment, documentation, mandatory deliverables on documentation, asset management, and operational readiness. VHBA has adopted the VBIS Standard as a required classification on all major health construction projects over $20 Mil.
The VBIS Standard, backed by Government, is easy to understand and adopt. The 4 level structure provides consistency for all maintainable assets within the built environment.
VBIS has also helped to provide data quality assurance by reviewing and certifying the data classification within the model used at New Footscray Hospital.
“Multiplex understand the value of handing over structured and validated VBIS data for operators to be ready to use from day one”
The New Footscray Hospital redevelopment project achieved VBIS Accredited status. This means that the BIM data set has been configured and achieves the VBIS Standard which is vital step in achieving data confidence and integrity in the industry.
If you would an advantage in the industry, then look at VBIS Accreditation for your project.
To find out more about Multiplex, see the following below:
https://www.multiplex.global/au/
https://www.multiplex.global/projects/new-footscray-hospital/