By IAN ROSS
To find inspiration in designing North Bay's Regional Health Centre, architect Brian Bertrand harkened back to his medal-winning university thesis.
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In creating 703,000 square feet of new space from scratch, the project's lead architect drew on his roots to conceptualize a town core for his hometown of Sturgeon Falls. He found parallels in the nearby mill town of 5,500 by sketching out bungalow-style buildings and a town square theme.
"In essence I was designing with the team, a small community."
The $211.9-million complex, tentatively scheduled to open in 2007 on a greenfield site next to Highway 17, will combine two groups, the 275-bed North Bay General Hospital and the 113-bed Northeastern Mental Health Centre, side-by-side on one campus.
It will be the largest single construction project ever undertaken in the Nipissing district. A PriceWaterhouseCoopers economic impact study in 2000 concluded the area would realize post-construction benefits of $17.9 million to $23.9 million, and about 1,500 people would be employed full-time.
The team created a "little village on a hill" with two large curving main streets bisecting each facility leading to a town centre. Influenced by the topography, they took advantage of the nearby natural escarpment of the 80-acre property to create a "little village on a hill" with two large curving main streets bisecting each facility leading to a town centre.
"This is a made-in-the-North solution," says Bertrand, whose firm, Critchley Delean Trussler Evans Bertrand Architects, designed hospitals in West Nipissing, Kirkland Lake and Kapuskasing. "It creates a whole different colouring on how we look at it and approach it. It becomes very personal."
The hospital will feature leading-edge medical advances including minimal access surgery, also known as laparoscopic surgery, and will be Canada's first site for telerobotic surgery.
The design process has been an exhaustive one. Following a year-long site search, architects spent months huddling with user groups from 28 different departments, as well as planners, consultants, public focus groups and the community in drawing up a functional plan and design process on a room-by-room basis.
After several rounds of consultations, the team periodically met for "value engineering" sessions at the end of a major project milestone for a complete cost review to stay on budget.
Bertrand says their transparent and open process - "to do exactly what is asked of us" - in following ministry capital planning guidelines, rules and
regulations has brought compliments from the province.
To deal with infectious disease outbreaks like SARS, expanded isolation rooms in the emergency entrance were worked into the plan to address a
triage situation. Flexible space with movable walls will enable a conventional unit to be converted into an isolation ward in a pinch.
Space provisions have been made to accommodate Northern Ontario Medical School students with an auditorium, research library and residents lounge if those linkages follow through.
The hospital will also incorporate the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system, a U.S. Green Building Association process, to analyze energy efficiency by looking at issues of windows, exterior wall construction, heating and cooling systems, and utilizing different building materials for its recyclable content.
The complex will utilize such features as piping-in 100 per cent fresh air throughout the buildings.
Final working drawings will be submitted to the Ministry of Health by mid-March.
"The Ministry requires two months to review the package and providing all of our finances are finalized by that time and in place, we're anticipating getting approvals to go to tender from the Ministry by mid-May," says Paul Landry, the project's executive director, who is counting on a two-month tendering process.
"If everything comes in on budget, the Ministry will allow us to award the construction contract in early September."
