b'PROJECT PROFILEStantec design team, with one pieceinto the existing main electrical room, of the project under construction andCoatzee says. You cant just shut power another piece in the design phase. Wedown too many times when you need had to fast-track the design of the firstto, and we dont like to do live tie-ins, phasethe ambulatory procedures unit,so we came up with a procedure that the core and shell piece of the secondeverybody agreed on. It was a number floor addition, and the new bridgeof weeks of coordination between the link to the existing hospitalso weInterior Health Authority, ourselvescould incorporate it as a change orderand the electrical contractor to make into Ledcors ED contract, detailsthose connections.Christianson. We were essentially building the new ED, moving themApart from the goal of tying the from the old ED into the new ED, andaesthetic of the new build to the existing then going back and renovating the oldolder buildings to create a unified visual ED to be an expanded part of the newfor further expansion later, there was ED, so there was some difficult the basic design challenge of evolving phasing there. medical construction codes that now The delicate dance between design,dictate greater floor-to-floor heights. planning, construction and ongoingIn older hospitals, the floor heights are hospital operations didnt stop there.a lot lower than in new construction, The effect of suddenly adding a secondnotes Christianson, so when youre floor meant that that the first didnttrying to marry a two-storey building have a roof, which, as youd imagine, isto an existing multi-storey building, not ideal. We needed to start finishingthe floors will not line up. Weve the new emergency department,incorporated a connecting bridge says Coetzee, so the building wasntnow to connect the new ambulatory waterproof in the sense that it hadprocedures unit into the existing a roof on. We needed to keep thehospital that has a gradient on it to schedule to make it worthwhile toconnect floors that no longer line up.start the finishing on the walls and doWith all of these moving parts, a new everything we needed to do to finishtechnique was deployed at the design the emergency department on time, andstage that proved indispensable not that involved a lot of coordination.just to the design team, but to the Service installation was no easier toHealth Authorities stakeholders and, accomplish in an operational facility.most critically, to the end users. For One of the main challenges is to tiethe ambulatory procedures unit, the in the electrical for the new facilityentire design process was done in three Photos courtesy of Ledcor dimensions, explains Christianson. We brought in 3D (virtual reality) headsets so that the end users could walk through the spaces while we were designing it, using live, 3D computer programs in those meetings to make changes to the design while we were getting user input. That was the first time that Interior Health had been exposed to that technology. Through ingenuity, flexibility, cooperation and a lot of coordination, the expansion is coming to fruition. Its an important project for the people in the Kootenay Boundary area, concludes Christianson, and a pretty enormous investment by Interior Health into that hospital. For a small regional hospital, theyre getting first-class emergency and ambulatory care services to benefit the people inthat region. 54 SOUTHERN INTERIOR CONSTRUCTION ASSOCIATION'