AMID the slow dance of six giant tower cranes, the £350 million Grange University Hospital continues to take shape at Llanfrechfa, near Cwmbran.

Work began at the Llanfrechfa Grange site in July last year, and 14 months on, the main body of the hospital - which will treat the area's sickest patients - is well advanced.

The cranes, crucial to the building process, are a temporary and very visible landmark in the Cwmbran area at the moment, dominating a site that will play a key role in healthcare in Gwent for decades to come.

First Minister Carwyn Jones paid a visit to the site yesterday as part of a tour of projects in Gwent.

Mr Jones, who is stepping down in the autumn after almost nine years in the role, got a close-up look at what is currently Wales' biggest building project.

Grange University Hospital is the physical centrepiece of the Clinical Futures programme to modernise health services in Gwent.

Supported by a vast range of changes designed to bring many services closer to the patients who need them - and by other hospitals and wellbeing centres providing routine treatments and care - the Grange 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, will have 560 beds, including trolleys and cots, and will have a helicopter pad for patients who need to arrive by air ambulance.

The hospital will have a dedicated paediatric assessment unit to manage all paediatric emergencies, and it will also be a base for neonatal intensive care.

And it will also house pathology, pharmacy, and radiology, including MRI and CT scanners.

Some 600 people will have been employed in its construction by the time it is completed. That is expected by the autumn of 2020, with the hospital to open its doors early in 2021.

It will serve a population of around 600,000 people, in Gwent and south Powys.

Funding for Grange University Hospital was approved by health secretary Vaughan Gething in October 2016, after more than a decade on the drawing board, having previously been known as a specialist and critical care centre.

On completion, 30,000 cubic metres of concrete will have been used on the building, which will also contain 10,500 voice and data points, 13,500 light fittings, and 190 kilometres of cables.

Mr Jones also visited the recently opened Brynmawr Wellbeing Centre, and the site of a new bridge on the Heads of the Valleys Road in Blaenau Gwent.