Following a successful week-long planning event in January that saw Leader health services staff and patient/family representatives explore options for the design of the community’s new integrated health facility, significant progress is being made to move the project planning through its early phases.
The creative 3P (Production, Preparation, Process) planning event held in January established basic adjacencies between departments and services, where the input of health services staff was essential in determining the best interior blueprint to maximize the patient flows and their health care experience. The overall design option selected included the addition of a third long term care wing which will be constructed between the existing north and west wings.
Following up on the efforts of the 3P team, the ‘schematic design’ phase began in early February. Members of the health services and design team travelled to Maple Creek to tour the acute care and universal care unit areas of the soon-to-be-open Southwest Integrated Healthcare Facility (SIHF).
“Seizing the opportunity for the staff to tour and review the layout of the Maple Creek facility was very timely in our design planning for Leader,” said Brenda Schwan, Vice President of Human Resources and Capital Project Lead. “They had a chance to see how the patients would flow through the programs and departments, and use that real-life-size information to make adjustments to the Leader design. This is another example of how we can use another community’s success to better the future programming in a separate community.”
Further discussions with the architects led to the final schematic design meeting on March 2. Following this, the interior adjacencies for wall placements, location of each desired space and room, and the coordination of all spaces were confirmed. The ‘design development’ phase is expected to begin on March 17, where the architect will expand upon the schematic design processes to develop more detailed drawings illustrating other aspects of the proposed design.
A variety of tenders have been awarded to the capital project partners that will be actively engaged in the design and construction planning process. In addition to aodbt architecture and interior design who was awarded the architectural services contract, Altus Geomatics (site survey), P. Machibroda Engineering (geotechnical services), and Golder Associates (hazardous materials) were the successful tenders for their respective Request for Proposals (RFP). The project’s general construction contractor RFP is expected to be released in summer 2015.
Construction on the new integrated facility is anticipated to begin in the fall of 2015 and it is expected to open its doors in the fall of 2016. The approved capital project will see a physical addition built onto the Western Senior Citizen’s Home which will see acute care, long term care, primary health care clinic, community health services, home care, and ambulance services included under one roof.