THE Royal Lancaster Infirmary's new Centenary Building is responsible for the destination of this year's prestigious Building Contractor of the Year award. National company Laing was named as this year's winner at a gala dinner held at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London's posh Park Lane last week. And it was the construction of the striking Centenary Building, opened earlier this year, that was singled out as the main reason why Laing was presented with the trophy by Lord Tebbit.

A spokesman for the Building for Britain campaign, which organises the national presentations, said: "The company had to deal with all of the problems of a challenging site while working within demanding noise restrictions as most of the building work was adjacent to a maternity and special care baby unit."

And the award's judges added: "Despite major changes late into the project, Laing achieved programme and budget in all of them. In doing so, it has set a standard of excellence in the health sector."

That was a sentiment echoed by Ian Cumming, chief executive of the Lancaster Acute Hospitals NHS Trust which runs the hospital. He said: "This has turned out to be a very good building both for us and our patients.

"When buildings are designed for the health service they seem to become out of date before they are even finished. We were determined not to fall into that trap and made a lot of changes as construction was going on.

"I guess you could say that we messed Laing about a bit but they responded brilliantly. We are very pleased that they have won this award."

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