I’m so pleased to share the news that we have selected our preferred proponent to design and build the new St. Paul’s Hospital. Following a long and robust process – one that has involved many hours of hard work by people across the organization, thank you! – we have chosen PCL Construction as our design builder. PCL Construction built the Gordon and Leslie Diamond Health Care Centre, Humber River Hospital and the Abbotsford Regional Hospital and Cancer Centre. You can read more about their experience with the health care sector here.)
This is a major milestone in the progress of the new St. Paul’s Hospital. Today’s announcement means construction is expected to begin in spring 2021 and that our new hospital is truly beginning to become a reality.
The final terms of the contract will be complete and signed off by the end of February 2021. After that, we will be able to share the design of the new hospital and where each department will be located. However, these designs will still be at a high level and there is much work still to be done.
Thank you in advance to all the staff and medical staff who we will be asking to engage in this detailed work with PCL Construction to complete the final design of the new St. Paul’s Hospital. We are continuing and committed to engaging in meaningful partnerships and collaboration with patients, families, Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, Indigenous and other community partners, and health care providers. And, of course, we continue to work with our valued partners at Vancouver Coastal Health and the Ministry of Health.
Whilst we continue to battle COVID, we can also now begin to envisage a post-COVID pandemic world, thanks to the amazing scientific advances on vaccine development. With the new St. Paul’s, we have a unique opportunity to shape this new world – to choose what we want to keep from our old world, and what we want to leave behind.
Our vision for the new St. Paul’s Hospital is to lead in the delivery of B.C.’s patient-centered model for health care by providing the highest-quality, innovative and compassionate care, which adds the most value to the patients that we serve. The new hospital will be an opportunity to create care that’s more centered around people – and that means everyone who works here as well as patients.
That will also mean changes in how we work, as well as the building design, in order to improve the experience and outcomes of the patients we serve, and to improve the job satisfaction of all our health professionals. We will soon have the opportunity to work more on these changes, and we will have early implementation opportunities so we can test out – in real time – what works and what doesn’t and make changes in advance where possible.
So we have an exciting journey ahead of us and I am truly delighted we are able to make this important next step. I hope as we continue to battle the current COVID-19 pandemic as well as the opioid overdose health emergency, this exciting news gives you hope and inspiration for the future.
