Provided by Windsor Regional Hospital. Provided by Windsor Regional Hospital.
Windsor

Team to lead hospital planning process selected

Windsor Regional Hospital has selected the team that will lead the new hospital planning process.

Paul Landry has been named as the project director. He has led similar planning and construction phases for new hospital projects in Montreal and Vancouver.

“Working with hospital staff and communities to modernize health care facilities is challenging, fun, and most of all rewarding for all those involved,” said Landry. “It’s a privilege to now be part of this project, and I look forward to working with the dedicated, passionate team here.“

Landry will be joined by industry professionals Dr. Andrew Petrakos as the Director of Clinical Programs Planning and Jeff Geml as the Director of Support Services Planning.

It’s estimated this phase of the planning process will last around 14 to 16 months. It will include meeting with user groups and holding town hall meetings to develop plans for the functional user spaces within the new hospital.

“We’re also going to go out and have a series of town halls where each of these user groups or combinations of user groups will talk very specifically about what they would like to see in terms of the design of say, cancer care. What would be the ideal experience, and what are the current barriers that exist in the current design that we can make different going forward,” said Manager of Communications and Community Engagement Allison Johnson.

After the consultations are complete, architects and cost estimators will come on board to flesh out the plans.

“We will plan for what we need in terms of the forecasted need well into the future, and we will present that to the ministry, and we will defend if you will, all of that analysis that leads us to the final programmable space. We will then let the cost come back to reflect what the new hospital will cost based on the needs,” said Landry.

Work on the functional programs is being supported by Agnew Peckham Healthcare Planners, who have led similar planning exercises at some of the largest and most recent new hospitals in Ontario, including the Ottawa Hospital, South Niagara, Trillium Health, Humber River, and Oakville-Trafalgar.

This is the second phase of the five-phase project, with the last phase being construction. If all goes according to plan, construction could begin in the summer of 2026.

“We will be one of the first hospitals being designed and built post-COVID, we will definitely benefit from all the learnings from COVID. One of the clear learnings is we desperately need a new acute care hospital for Windsor-Essex,” said Windsor Regional Hospital CEO David Musyj.

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