Baffin board drawing up plans for new hospital

MICHAELA RODRIGUE
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — Baffin residents can expect to get a glimpse of the region’s proposed new hospital in a matter of months, the Baffin health board officials say.

Final approval and funding for a new hospital must still be nailed down by the Nunavut government, but the Baffin Regional Health and Social Services Board recently awarded an engineering and architecture contract to develop the hospital’s “pre-design.”

The contract was awarded to a joint venture between Iqaluit-based Ferguson Simek Clark, and Halifax-based Nycum William & Associates. The pre-design is expected to cost $560,000.

The Nunavut Health and Social Services Department gave the health board the go-ahead to hire an architect, and the design process should begin this June, Jarvis Hoult, the chief executive officer of the Baffin board, told board members this week.

At that time the public will be canvassed for its opinion on early designs. Plans for the hospital should be complete by September.

That would mean construction would be finished by January 2002, and doors opened the following spring.

“This is a pretty tight schedule. It’s pretty ambitious, but we think we’ll be able to meet this deadline,” Hoult told board members. “Even a short delay… can mean the difference between getting started and waiting another seven to eight months.”

To speed up the process, the health board plans to start construction on the building before every aspect of the hospital’s design is complete, Hoult said. The pre-design will allow construction to begin early.

But the design details of the design will be added and modified as construction progresses, Hoult said.

The Qikiqtaaluk Corp. is expected to award the construction sub-contracts. Under the “P3” method that the Nunavut government is considering, the government would lease the hospital back from QC.

But even if the design is completed by September, the project will still need approval from the Nunavut government.

“The government will have to evaluate and be able to move by the time we finish our pre-design. When we finish our pre-design we want to move right into releasing this project for tender,” Hoult said.

Last month, the government said it approved the P3 idea in principle, but it wants to see architectural designs before it makes a final decision. The government plans to review the proposed new health facilities in Baffin, Keewatin and the Kitikmeot on a case-by-case basis.

Last week the three regional health boards asked Health and Social Services Minister Ed Picco to sign an agreement that confirms the P3 process, said Dennis Patterson, chair of the health board.

Patterson said Picco then said that he needs full cabinet approval for the document.

Picco also told the health boards that there are no capital funds in the budget to finance building new hospitals. That means any new building would have to be funded through the Inuit birthright development corporations, Patterson said.

Picco met with the board during its three-day meeting, but the proposed new hospitals were not discussed.

If the plans for a new hospital do not go forward during the next year, Hoult said the commissioned hospital designs will not be wasted.

“Spending the money on the pre-design now would not be a waste of money because the design will not change relative to the functions we want in the hospital. If it sat on the shelf for a year or so, we would not have to go back and start over again,” Hoult said.