Bill Frost with Graham Infrastructure will speak about the challenges, trials and tribulations of 3 health care buildings, known as the Kelowna and Vernon Hospitals P3 Project.
Bill Frost with Graham Infrastructure is speaking about the challenges, trials and tribulations of three health care buildings, known as the Kelowna and Vernon Hospitals P3 Project.
He is speaking at a workshop at the Vancouver Regional Construction Association's (VRCA) Construction Learning Forum in Whistler on May 31
The project earned a VRCA Gold Award of Excellence for Graham Infrastructure.
The project started in 2007.
Bill: They bundled the project and that's what made it complicated. It turned out to be the largest project ever built in the Okanagan.
It was a design, build, finance and maintain contract.
The maintenance was done by another contractor and it was financed by a consortium of banks.
Bill’s role was to put the team together.
The contract was for three separate buildings.
“It was a lump-sump deal for us,” Bill. "It was a very complex deal," he said.
There were a series of agreements that they needed to go through.
Graham secured key trade contractors in both Kelowna and Vernon. The trade contractors would work only on one hospital.
Graham was bidding these jobs with only 10 per cent of the design done. They got design assist from the trade contractors.
“It kept me up at night,” Bill said.
Graham Infrastructure was the low bidder, but still over budget.
They had to reduce the scope a bit, but it was manageable.
“The amount of documents on this project were staggering,” he said.
1,300 people were logging into the cloud-based documents system, Aconex.
There were 800,000 documents and 650,000 pieces of formal mail.
There was a $1 million penalty for each facility if it didn’t reach LEED Gold certification.
Bill said they obtained certification and avoided the penalties.
In Kelowna, Graham Infrastructure finished seven months early. They developed and used a propriety forming system, which helped speed the process along.
Thousands of pieces of hospital equipment were part of the project for each hospital.
“We didn’t have to supply the equipment, but we had to manage it,” Bill said.
Graham Infrastructure also had to install a sophisticated baby alarm system, and had to ensure sightlines between the nursing station and neo-natal unit.
“The finishes were simple, but durable,” Bill said.
The Kelowna hospital included lots of glass and bright colours.
Graham installed a pre-fab helicopter pad on the top of the Kelowna hospital, but had to change the location at the last minute to accommodate the possibility of helicopter engine failure. It cost them more than expected to make the change
For the Vernon Hospital, the original plan was to house all the mechanical in a penthouse, but that changed and the mechanical ended up taking up an entire floor.
The project Graham Infrastructure was working on is now called the Polson Tower.
“At the end of the day, it was a successful project and the client was happy,” Bill said.
JOC DIGITAL MEDIA
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