BTHC expansion is on schedule

Construction on the $100 million expansion to the Boundary Trails Health Centre (BTHC) is progressing well and is on schedule. 

Kyle MacNair, implementation lead with Southern Health-Sante Sud, delivered the good news at Friday's BTHC Foundation gala in Morden. 

Currently taking shape is the largest part of the construction, the new inpatient unit that includes 24 medicine beds on the main floor and the Level 2 nursery and Obstetrics on the second flood. 

"So that's the building to the west of the of the hospital. That's where we have the stairwells, the elevator shaft that they've already poured, and you're just starting to see the steel structure that is on the first floor and very quickly in the next three or four weeks you'll see the whole steel structure go up on that two-story building," explained MacNair.

As crews finish with the concrete on that facility, they'll shift their attention to the Community Services building. 

"That's the building that is kind of straight north of the current hospital and that's going to be where they'll start on the grade beams, they'll start on stairwells, and they'll do the elevator shafts for that building. As the steel finishes at the back of the building, they'll rotate and move and the steel will come up on that main Community Service building," added MacNair. 

Kyle MacNair, implementation lead with Southern Health-Sante Sud, delivered the good news at Friday's BTHC Foundation gala in Morden. 

The third phase is the energy centre at the back of the hospital. "That's where the backup generators will be built. That's the last thing that they'll put the concrete on and then the structure will go up."

In less than two weeks' time, planning will begin for the massive renovation to the current hospital facility. 

"When these buildings are built and we move staff over to those buildings, and how we're going to open up areas of the hospital to start on the renovation," said MacNair, noting they are quite happy with how things are progressing. "We've tendered essentially the entire project. So, all the pieces of finishing are tendered out all the way through to the end of construction. Basically, the only thing we have left to decide on in terms of cost is loose furniture and those kinds of things."

Those renovations include a bigger emergency room, for example. This will be made possible by relocating the current Health Records department to the main floor of the Community Service building once it is complete. 

"So, we have more treatment spaces, more ability to register patients, a little bit more comfortable waiting spaces, a little bit more privacy on where you register because right now, you're registering in a thoroughfare," explained MacNair. "The other (example) would be CancerCare. Currently, they're on the second floor and the space is inadequate for the amount of care that's provided to that service, so it's going to more-than-double in size when we move it down to the main floor of the hospital where currently the administration department is."

Meantime, the BTHC Foundation announced at Friday's gala that it had met its $10 million local fund-raising goal for the project in a year less a day.

~With files from Chris Sumner~
 

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