The Nova Scotia government is looking for outside help to evaluate the true cost of redeveloping the province's largest hospital, and to determine if it makes sense to partner with private industry to complete the massive modernization project.

​The province needs to replace two aging buildings at the Victoria General site that make up the core of the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre complex in Halifax.

The plan is to empty both the Centennial and Victoria buildings by 2022. They will be replaced by other facilities, some near the current complex, others outside the downtown core.

On Wednesday, the province issued a tender asking consulting companies to pre-qualify for the work to analyze whether the so-called P3 model is the way to go. Companies will only have until the end of next month to plead their cases.

Bureaucrats won't pre-judge

The province estimates the consultants will need at least a year to do their work once they are chosen.

Paul LaFleche, the deputy minister of infrastructure, told a legislature committee Wednesday bureaucrats are not pre-judging whether a public-private partnership is appropriate.

"My job and the job of my colleagues here is to advise government when it might be good and when it might not," he said.

"Then we try and get the best deal we can. And if we can't get a good deal, even though it may be appropriate for a P3, then we will advise them not to do it.

"If we can get a good deal and we find that there are appropriate benefits for the taxpayer, for the citizens of Nova Scotia, then we will advise them that this is something they should do. So that's basically where we are. We're not ideological about it either way."