New St. Catharines, Ontario hospital designed with extensive anti-infection safeguards

The new $759-million Health Care Complex, under construction by Plenary Health Niagara west of St. Catharines, Ontario, has created 5,400 construction jobs. General contractor PCL Constructors Ltd. has used local sub-trades from the Niagara region.

For now it is known only as the “new Health Care Complex” but the Niagara Health System’s $759 million, 970,000-square-foot new regional hospital has, until recently, been the largest health facility under construction in the province.

More than a decade in planning the hospital will replace the aging St. Catharines General and Ontario Street (former Hotel Dieu) hospital in central St. Catharines and serve that city and communities like Thorold and Niagara-on-the-Lake, more than 340,000 residents.

Started in spring 2009 the first patients are scheduled to enter the complex, which includes a cancer centre, in spring 2013.

It is also the first project under Infrastructure Ontario’s Design Build Finance and Maintain model where a consortium called Plenary Health Niagara (Borealis Infrastructure and Plenary Group) will be responsible for all construction and maintenance up to 30 years. The project has created 5,400 construction jobs, 1,000 on the site at peak periods.

The acute care hospital will have 375 beds, 80 per cent in private rooms, with surgical, emergency and ambulatory services, some never offered previously in the region, such as cancer treatment, cardiac catheterization, and longer-term mental health beds.

The complex is being built to general LEED standard in a campus-like setting complete with gardens, ponds and walking paths.

The building, at First Street and Fourth Avenue, was constructed on a former small farm. There will be 1,400 parking spaces on site.

The hospital incorporates among the latest in healing design, such as considerable light with windows in every patient room, a healing garden, corridors and large courtyard like spaces well-lit with natural and tactile materials.

General contractor PCL Constructors Ltd. has used local sub-trades from the Niagara region. Sayers & Associates won the mechanical work.

“I think we might have come close to emptying the (union) halls or at least reducing the backlog of skilled trades,” Reynder Van Der Meulen, PCL’s senior project manager, said.

The hospital consists of two five storey wings where patient rooms are located, with fewer storeys in the more extensive entrance, emergency, diagnostic and treatment blocks. The 67,000 sq. ft. cancer centre is two storeys with four radiation bunkers, with capacity for a fifth.

The hospital will be among the first in Canada to be built with such extensive anti-infection safeguards, mainly a response to the SARS and C. Difficile outbreaks in hospitals the past decade. In addition, ventilation systems are designed so that areas of the hospital can be isolated should there be an outbreak, both in horizontal and vertical zones.

Bruce Crook, director of Australia-based Silver Thomas Hanley Architecture (which teamed with Canada’s Bregman + Hamann Architects) called this, “quite an innovation and it was quite difficult to achieve not only from a building engineering perspective but also from an architectural perspective.”

There are terminal HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) modules to continually filter contaminated areas while the outbreak is occurring. Though “reasonably common” in hospitals these days this is employed to a very large extent here, which is “certainly an interesting” application, he said.

But this segregation would still provide access to all significant hospital services.

“There would still be access to all components of care right from the emergency rooms, diagnostic imaging, up to the inpatient rooms, intensive care,” said Gloria Kain, chief planning and development officer for Niagara Health.

The complex also was designed for sufficient seismic loading, which might be surprising for a building located in the Niagara fruit belt.

“The structure is more robust than the average would be but even that is getting more and more common in hospitals,” Van Der Meulen said. “The design of the roofing, the building envelope, and the structure, they’re more robust than, say, an office building.”

The building must also be able to operate at a certain level after an earthquake. The envelope has about 30 per cent glazing and an equal combination of precast, brick and siding. The precast masonry brick walls had to be reinforced by tie downs in grout-filled anchorages to protect against wind and seismic loads.