The new acute services building at Christchurch Hospital, now known as Christchurch Hospital Hagley, was due for completion in 2019. (Video first published in December 2018)

The opening of the new Christchurch Hospital building has been delayed yet again – this time after more than 7000 fire protection defects were discovered.

The fire protection work was carried out by a subcontractor, which the Ministry of Health (MOH) would not name, and appears to have delayed the opening of the new $500 million hospital building until halfway through this year. The building was initially expected to open in September 2018.

Stuff reported in January that Canterbury health authorities were so desperate for space they were considering moving into the delayed new hospital building in winter if necessary.

STACY SQUIRES/STUFF The new Christchurch Hospital Hagley building, under construction beside Christchurch Women's Hospital.

In the same report in January, MOH maintained the hospital handover to the Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) would happen by the end of March. However, Stuff understands health workers were sceptical and had been running sweepstakes on when the building would be ready.

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The discovery of the fire protection defects would take several weeks to fix and would be a "major contributor to the delay", a MOH spokesperson said.

About 7300 defects were found as part of the quality assurance process and 6000 had already been fixed. The cost of remediation work was being met by the subcontractor, the spokesperson said.

It was too early to say whether there would be legal proceedings or contractual action taken as result of the defects, they said.

John Kirk-Anderson/Stuff The new helipad at Christchurch Hospital will allow critically ill patients to get treatment faster, but won't be used until the new Hagley building opens.

Some examples of fire protection in buildings can be fire-resistant sprays, wrapping, metal sheets and fire doors, which effectively stop fires from easily spreading from room to room. The fire protection work in the hospital building refers to protection of installed services such as electrical wires and plumbing in the walls.

Auckland University of Technology construction professor John Tookey said the extent of the delays and the cost of fixing the defects would depend on the type of problems that had happened.

"If it's in the walls, depending on the extent, you'll have to knock the wall down and start again, which is not going to be a quick fix. If these are surface defects, it could be possible to just use a spray to cover the gaps, which thickens and hardens to protect the applied area."

Subcontractors were likely to be in breach of their contracts if they did not meet the standard of work expected, Tookey said.

SUPPLIED AUT construction professor John Tookey says subcontractors could lose a part of their total contract payment if defects are not fixed properly. (File photo)

"The thing with hospitals and big government contracts is that they have buying power – meaning these subcontractors may not be shortlisted for future jobs.

"On contracts like this, a part of the payment may be held until the defects are fixed, known as a retention cost. This makes it important for the subcontractors to fix the defects or a proportion of their total contract payment may be retained [by the ministry]."

Earlier this year, CDHB chief executive David Meates said it was "imperative" the board had access to Christchurch Hospital Hagley this winter as it was expecting a shortfall of up to 100 inpatient beds.

Speaking on Friday, Meates said the CDHB had a number of facilities in need of significant repairs which could only start once the new hospital building was open.

"Until then, delivering high quality care continues to be a challenge, particularly for our clinical teams who have been amazingly resilient and resourceful to date," he said.

"Any delay has a critical flow-on effect on our ability to manage as we get closer to winter, and on the cost of delivering services such as elective surgery which we are currently having to outsource due to having too few operating theatres, while demand continues to increase."