OUT of a landscape dominated by three giant tower cranes, the £350 million Grange University Hospital is taking shape.

In the little more than 10 months since health secretary Vaughan Gething cut the ceremonial first sod at Llanfrechfa Grange, near Cwmbran, the site has been transformed - and there is plenty more change to come.

More than two years of building and fitting out remain to be done, and it will be the better part of three years before the hospital - which will treat Gwent's sickest patients - will open its doors. Spring 2021 is the target.

But what is currently Wales' largest building project is well-established, and the site is alive sound and motion.

Dumper trucks scuttle here and there, replacing on the now completed grounds profile thousands of tonnes of topsoil removed and stored at the beginning of the project.

Once the topsoil is back in place, a programme of planting can begin, with the aim of allowing two years of growth and establishment before the hospital opens.

The building itself is currently a mass of bare concrete, temporary stairwells and exposed girders, but its imprint is already apparent, as shown in the drone photographs published here.

Grange University Hospital will deal with all major emergencies, and will treat and care for those needing complex emergency or critical care.

It will house more than 40 specialist services, and will have a helicopter pad for patients who need to arrive by air ambulance.

Laing O’Rourke, which is building the hospital, is working with cost and project managers Gleeds - and bricks and mortar are very much out.

Sections of the building are instead made at Laing O'Rourke's factory in the Midlands before being transported to the site and joined together.

Project manager Mike Lewis said the speed with which the building is taking shape is a measure of the benefits of this approach, involving "very rewarding, modern construction methods".

On completion, 600 people will have been employed in the hospital's construction. Thirty thousand cubic metres of concrete is involved, and the hospital will contain 10,500 voice and data points, 13,500 light fittings, and 190 kilometres of cables.