Corner Brook Acute Care Hospital, NL, Canada

The challenge: robust healthcare planning aligned with local need

The new Western Memorial Regional Hospital in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador, had spent many years in the planning stages. Once complete, it would replace the existing hospital to provide increased capacity and modern facilities to respond to the healthcare needs of a population of 80,000 people within a geography of 14,000 square miles, including many dispersed urban communities and a significant rural population with no access to local ambulatory care.

As need for the new facility grew stronger, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador decided to commission a due diligence exercise to ensure that capacity and planning requirements were relevant and robust.

Archus were appointed as part of the technical advisory team to review and re-develop the healthcare planning elements necessary to complete the Project Agreement and enable to project to move forward.

Finding a solution

We began with a full review of the existing functional program (clinical design case) and quickly identified the issues within the existing models, which needed to be revised.

With many clinical teams sceptical of investing their time after having participated in previous user group processes, we knew that securing time and support for further clinical input was going to be challenging.

Keen to recognise the level of contribution previously made and encourage further participation and engagement, we employed a flexible approach which recognised busy workloads and used previous findings as our starting point, which meant we were able to successfully engage clinical teams over a further four rounds of user group meetings.

Using our exceptional understanding of clinical processes and robust patient flow data, we were able to resolve clinical concerns regarding future capacity levels, working through the proposed new models of care to demonstrate how a lean approach would be deliverable within the recommended capacity.

The revised functional program covered all clinical, support and facilities departments and was accompanied by a robust review of the previous activity modelling, capacity planning and a well-considered clinical and support service brief covering Emergency Care, Mental health inpatients, Medical & Surgical inpatients, Critical care, Medical imaging, Pathology, Maternity and Paediatrics and Interventional services.

We added further value by introducing a greater degree of standardisation to room types to enable future flexibility and used best practice design concepts from the UK to help resolve certain operational issues.

The outcome

The revised outputs were signed off by the hospital board, which enabled the finalisation of the design package for the hospital and administration facilities for incorporation within the Project Agreement.

As the project continued to progress successfully, we evaluated both the developing and final submitted bids against the Project Agreement and then continued to ensure overall adherence to the brief, reviewing change requests to the design while protecting the financial envelope. We acted as a trusted part of the advisory team to Western Health throughout, helping them to better understand the issues facing the contractor and architect and ensuring expectations were aligned.

Following a 17-month design build finance maintain process, the new Corner Brook Acute Care Hospital broke ground in the summer of 2019. The $700m development was completed in November 2023 and is expected to open to patients in Spring 2024. The hospital will provide the same services currently provided at the existing Western Memorial Regional Hospital along with an expanded cancer care program, including radiation services, providing healthcare services in a modern, state-of-the-art environment, supported by design and systems which maximise sustainability.

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