Launch of call for proposals for the CHUM’s research centre

Montreal, QC – The Centre hospitalier de l’Universit de Montral (CHUM) says it has issued a call for proposals that will lead to the construction of the most important medical research centre in Quebec, which will have a full staff of 1,300.

It says the maximum budgetary envelope for the centre corresponds with a current real value of $320 million. The current net real value of the project incorporates a combined total of the costs for designing, building, funding, operating and maintaining the infrastructures over the life of the partnership agreement, or 32 years.

“The research centre will be the first component of the CHUM to be built downtown,” said Dr Denis R Roy, CHUM’s general manager. “Today we have reached a specific launch point which, having completed meticulous planning for our needs, means we now enter the productive phase of this great project that will benefit CHUM patients and the Quebec economy.”

Two consortiums, Accs Recherche CHUM et Consortium Axor-Dalkia, were identified as potential private partners in the project in November 2007 after CHUM launched a call that summer for qualifications to respond to today’s call for proposals. The two candidates demonstrated their technical and financial capabilities to undertake a project of such international scope at that time. CHUM will transmit to the candidates the detailed technical specifications that describe the required functionality so the future CHUM Research Centre will meet the needs of the people who will work and visit there.

Based on these specifications, each consortium will need to prepare a comprehensive proposal comprising the design, construction, financing, operations and maintenance of infrastructures over the life of the partnership agreement.

“The CHUM Research Centre already represents an impressive concentration of grey matter, and is at the origin of discoveries that have had a considerable impact on our global knowledge or various diseases,” said Dr Guy Breton, vice-rector of the Universit de Montral. “It brings together more than 20% of our research chairs, and hundreds of dedicated men and women who have the health of our fellow citizens heart. In brief, it is already the pride of the Universit de Montral and I cannot help but rejoice in the knowledge that it soon will be housed in facilities that will allow the researchers and their teams to deploy their talents.”

The CRCHUM will become the most important concentration of expertise in health research in Quebec. It will bring together a full complement of 1,300 – nearly 400 researchers, 356 master’s, doctoral and post-doctoral students, technical and administrative staff – as well as the financial resources for six research centres, all under the same roof.

“This concentration of expertise is exceptional in both quality and volume, as the Fonds de recherche en sant du Qubec recently recognized,” said Dr Jacques Turgeon, director of the Research Centre. “For the last year, we’ve reorganized our research axis in alignment with the CHUM’s clinical priorities, to allow us to offer world-level expertises in the areas we have selected. Thus, the CRCHUM will become a turntable by increasing the Montreal region’s capacity for innovation, by attracting the best researchers and students and by contributing to the enhanced knowledge transfer in all sectors, in Quebec as well as abroad.”