March 15, 2010

Healthcare infrastructure

Construction restarting on hospital in Fort St. John, British Columbia

JIM STIRLING

correspondent

PRINCE GEORGE, B.C.

Steel and other building materials are on-site awaiting co-operative weather and a construction re-start on the $297.9 million Fort St. John Hospital and Residential Care Project in northeastern British Columbia’s Peace River country.

It’s shaping up to be a busy year.

“We’d like to get the walls up, have the roof on and heat in before next winter,” said Tom Sparrow, project director for the owner, the provincial Northern Health Authority.

“Right now, we’re about three months ahead of schedule.”

Last year, a frost protection system was installed to protect the building’s foundations and drainage systems from frost heaving. ISL Health construction crews, working on behalf of Northern Health, installed about 13 kilometres of looped, temporary pipes and covered them with insulated tarps. The pipes contain glycol which is pumped around the site by three gas fired boilers.

The system was designed to maintain a temperature of one degree Celsius throughout winter.

Joint venture partners on the project are Acciona Infrastructures Canada Inc., an international company with offices in Vancouver and Montreal; Stuart Olson Contractors Inc., of Richmond and ISL Health.

The province is contributing $179 million toward the project with much of the rest from the Peace River Regional Hospital District.

The complex will occupy a 16 ha site and includes a 55 bed replacement hospital – the existing hospital was built in 1962 – a 123 bed residential care facility for seniors and a 6,600 square metre service building. It is slated for completion in 2012.

The new hospital is being designed and built to achieve LEED Gold certification, Sparrow said.

An early sustainable building practice included the purchase of 300,000 board feet of lumber from local supplier Canfor Corp. in Fort St. John. The purchase reduced the amount of fossil fuel needed for transportation.

Another green building practice is the use of formaldehyde-free oriented strand board.

“About 75 per cent of the by-products from construction will be recyclable and excavated material will be used on site and won’t have to be trucked away,” he pointed out.

Sparrow added that the construction project will be monitored on a monthly basis to ensure it’s meeting LEED Gold standards.

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