Procurement plans for Windsor hospital among the highlights in IO’s latest Market Update document
Windsor Regional Hospital (WRH) has a timeline for procurement and construction of its planned multi-billion dollar Windsor/Essex Acute Care Hospital.
Specific details were released last week as part of Infrastructure Ontario’s (IO) May 2022 Market Update. The document shows the tendering process will kick off in early 2025, with construction scheduled to begin in the spring of 2027.
The announcement follows the October 2021 funding announcement by Premier Doug Ford and Health Minister Christine Elliot, that allowed the hospital to move forward with Stage 2 planning.
“The new acute care hospital project has moved ahead aggressively in the last 18 months. We went from no funding for Stage 2 to full funding and now a fixed RFP date and shovel in the ground date,” said WRH President and CEO David Musyj.
In the next few months, a team of architects and engineers will use the newly developed Functional Program for the hospital to create block schematic plans for the building. These early plans will illustrate how all the rooms in each department will be organized throughout the hospital both horizontally and vertically. The project team is on track to have this part of the planning ready to submit to the Ministry of Health, along with a revised cost estimate, by early next year.
Following this, additional work is required to further develop the plan and design so it is ready to take to market in 2026. During this time, the hospital will work closely with Infrastructure Ontario and follow a detailed process to select a developer to further the design into the working drawings required to build the hospital and complete the project.
"We have a lot of exciting work ahead of us,” said Musyj. “But now we can focus on getting everything in place so we can start the tendering process in 2025; break ground and start building this much needed and long-awaited state-of-the-art hospital, in the spring 2027.”
The construction period is expected to last approximately four years.
Meanwhile, IO’s second market update of the year contains not much in the way of new developments. The document lists 38 projects – of which 26 are in pre-procurement and 12 in active procurement – worth a combined $50 billion in estimated total capital costs.
The list also includes 17 additional government-announced projects in early stages of planning and determining the project’s scope, timing and delivery model.
The new list includes just one new project – the Western Surgical Tower for the University Health Network – Toronto. The project is value at between $500 million and $1 billion.
Several projects have moved into new phases of procurement, including the 1Door4Care Integrated Treatment Centre Project at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa, the Mississauga Hospital Site project within Trillium Health Partners Broader Redevelopment, the Garden City Skyway Twinning in St. Catharines, and the controversial Bradford Bypass highway project in York Region.
The full 2022 Market Update is available on Infrastructure Ontario’s website.