Winnipeg Construction X

[pspeid]

Interesting that Stephenson has promised billions of dollars in public funding for many progressive and worthwhile projects yet she still can't totally rid herself of the Pallister legacy. If she had come on as an "outsider" (not part of the Pallister cabinet) she might have been able to create more distance, but as it is, she seems to own his legacy as well as hers.

Of course anything can happen in an election. My main worry about her if that happens is that she'll promise herself into the Premiership then renege by saying "oh yes, we'll honour ALL those promises....in 20 years or so" (In the meantime...cut, cut cut).

[pacman]

Originally Posted by pspeid

Interesting that Stephenson has promised billions of dollars in public funding for many progressive and worthwhile projects yet she still can't totally rid herself of the Pallister legacy. If she had come on as an "outsider" (not part of the Pallister cabinet) she might have been able to create more distance, but as it is, she seems to own his legacy as well as hers.

Of course anything can happen in an election. My main worry about her if that happens is that she'll promise herself into the Premiership then renege by saying "oh yes, we'll honour ALL those promises....in 20 years or so" (In the meantime...cut, cut cut).

I think its more than fair that Stephenson owns a good part of Pallister's legacy since she was not a minor part of his government. That being said, I think Pallister and the PC's strategy when they came to power was a good cop/bad cop where Pallister (bad cop) makes the unpopular (needed) decisions to get the Province's books back in decent shape, then gets out of the way so that Stephenson or whoever ended up next can play good cop and spend normally once they were able to afford it. The argument can be made that deferring spending in order to get the house in order ends up costing more in the end, but that's more for the economists to figure out. Personally I skew more towards the spend what you can afford side in my household and in general I prefer governments to do the same but looks like I'm going off topic and should keep that in the provincial politics thread.

Anyways, this hospital expansion/upgrade is much needed and I hope it gets built properly. When the only thing people complain about is that it should've been built sooner then that's an overall positive.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by pacman

Anyways, this hospital expansion/upgrade is much needed and I hope it gets built properly. When the only thing people complain about is that it should've been built sooner then that's an overall positive.

That's a pretty big gripe though. Hundreds of millions of dollars that could have been used on other things will now be used to pay for construction cost/financing cost increases. In essence the province is spending hundreds of millions of dollars more on the project which everyone agrees is necessary, but not getting any improvements, expansions or other benefits.

It's a good thing IG Field got built when it did, otherwise the premier would now be green-lighting the same design but for $600 million.

[thurmas]

No one knew in 2016 that covid-19 would hit and we would see inflation come back after not really dealing with it in over 30 years. Kinda a foolish hindsight argument

[bomberjet]

$1.5 billion is a lot of money to spend on a generic sounding hospital.

Create approximately 240 new private patient rooms, each built to meet current infection prevention and control guidelines;
Enable the use of general hospital acute rooms as private rooms;
Establish campus space for new, complex procedural and diagnostic imaging services;
Allow for expansion of the adult emergency department and associated clinic spaces to support patient treatment and flow; and
Address clinical capacity needs, including space to expand critical care units in the future if needed.

This all sounds really generic. Is there a detail of what departments exactly will be in the new hospital space? It says allow for expansion of the emergency room. Does this include an expanded emergency room or simply allow for a future expansion?

[pacman]

Originally Posted by esquire

That's a pretty big gripe though. Hundreds of millions of dollars that could have been used on other things will now be used to pay for construction cost/financing cost increases. In essence the province is spending hundreds of millions of dollars more on the project which everyone agrees is necessary, but not getting any improvements, expansions or other benefits.

It's a good thing IG Field got built when it did, otherwise the premier would now be green-lighting the same design but for $600 million.

It's a valid gripe but we can't look at it only through the 2023 lens. The books were absolute shit back when they took over, credit rating going in the tank, crazy debt servicing costs, and a lot of needless spending. Also, federal funding to the province is way higher today compared to back then, you couldn't assume those higher than expected increases were coming. Who knew construction inflation would take off to the degree it has in the last few years? It's easy to look back now and just say we should've bit the bullet back then (and in hindsight its obvious that would have been the right decision) but we can't just ignore the state of affairs back then. Monday morning quarterbacking is easy. I'm just glad it's getting done now.

[esquire]

^ Yes, hindsight is 20/20. But maybe imposing draconian cuts to score political points wasn't the greatest idea regardless. A lot of the things that were cut wasn't exactly frilly, optional stuff. And it'll end up getting built 10 years later for 50% more money.

[drew]

Originally Posted by thurmas

No one knew in 2016 that covid-19 would hit and we would see inflation come back after not really dealing with it in over 30 years. Kinda a foolish hindsight argument

It's not really foolish.

Even without accounting for Covid - construction inflation generally runs 10 to 15% per year. Delaying a necessary project for 7 years "cuz" causes all of us to pay more for it.

[Atrial78]

Originally Posted by bomberjet

$1.5 billion is a lot of money to spend on a generic sounding hospital.

Create approximately 240 new private patient rooms, each built to meet current infection prevention and control guidelines;
Enable the use of general hospital acute rooms as private rooms;
Establish campus space for new, complex procedural and diagnostic imaging services;
Allow for expansion of the adult emergency department and associated clinic spaces to support patient treatment and flow; and
Address clinical capacity needs, including space to expand critical care units in the future if needed.

This all sounds really generic. Is there a detail of what departments exactly will be in the new hospital space? It says allow for expansion of the emergency room. Does this include an expanded emergency room or simply allow for a future expansion?

Sometimes generic is what we need. One of the biggest challenges for Emergency Departments is getting patients admitted when the wards are full. This then slows things down in the ED as patients wait hours to days waiting for a ward bed to open, taking space from new patients arriving at the ED. Hopefully, with more ward beds it will alleviate this issue.

I believe HSC is also opening up a "minor treatment clinic" this month which will take simpler cases that show up to the ED.

Finally, the expansion of procedural/diagnostic space is very important as more of medicine occurs there rather than in an operating room. These are things like colonoscopy suites, catheterization labs, interventional radiology suites, etc.

[bomberjet]

True enough. Reading more about it. The article mentions replacing of the adult bed towers, which is specific enough I guess. I'll wait for further details on how they'll spend the $1.5 billion.

I spent about 2 months recently at the Shriners Hospital in Montreal. It is part of the McGill University super hospital. it cost about $3.5 billion (opened in 2015) for the whole complex. And it's crazy nice and 4 or 5 hospitals in one complex, much like HSC.

So running $1.5 billion here in Manitoba for a hospital 10 years later, my expectations are pretty sky high.

[rkspec]

Im curious if the 1.5B will include doing something with the old Womens Hospital on Notre Dame?

[bomberjet]

To me this reads like $1.5 billion to fill in the hole along Sherbrooke, including a "10 storey tower" part for 240 beds.

[rkspec]

Indeed, i didnt see anything else either.
Thanks

[Biff]

That bed tower will be maybe $200m to $300m. The UofM Bannatyne building $65m.

I would have to assume there will be future announcements regarding the demo of the old bed buildings and new additional bed towers as well as a new CancerCare building that was cancelled by Pallister ($400+M).

[cllew]

Originally Posted by rkspec

Im curious if the 1.5B will include doing something with the old Womens Hospital on Notre Dame?

Isn't there something already announced for that location a year or so ago?

ETA:

Did a little looking and the top two floors of that building were to be converted into a 28 bed acute stroke recovery unit.

[pacman]

Originally Posted by esquire

^ Yes, hindsight is 20/20. But maybe imposing draconian cuts to score political points wasn't the greatest idea regardless. A lot of the things that were cut wasn't exactly frilly, optional stuff. And it'll end up getting built 10 years later for 50% more money.

Characterizing what the PC's did to clean up the mess we were in as "draconian cuts to score political points" is such a lazy argument. They were voted in to a massive majority with over DOUBLE the votes as the NDP and did exactly what they campaigned they would do. Hindsight can be 20/20 all it wants to be, but the population of Manitoba essentially begged them to do it. There was no bait and switch. We all know that it's going to cost more now than if it was built at the time, the rest of the conversation is subjective opinion that skews one way or the other based on political views. It's not a conversation that really interests me other than trying to keep the context accurate.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by pacman

Characterizing what the PC's did to clean up the mess we were in as "draconian cuts to score political points" is such a lazy argument. They were voted in to a massive majority with over DOUBLE the votes as the NDP and did exactly what they campaigned they would do. Hindsight can be 20/20 all it wants to be, but the population of Manitoba essentially begged them to do it. There was no bait and switch. We all know that it's going to cost more now than if it was built at the time, the rest of the conversation is subjective opinion that skews one way or the other based on political views. It's not a conversation that really interests me other than trying to keep the context accurate.

Obviously our views may differ, but I don't think the electorate of Manitoba necessarily bought the PC platform lock, stock and barrel so much as they wanted to remove a long in the tooth NDP government that was tired and falling apart in some respects.

For instance, I don't recall very many people at the time thinking it was an awesome shrewd move to cancel the CancerCare expansion project. Even fewer people would say that now.

[pacman]

Originally Posted by esquire

Obviously our views may differ, but I don't think the electorate of Manitoba necessarily bought the PC platform lock, stock and barrel so much as they wanted to remove a long in the tooth NDP government that was tired and falling apart in some respects.

For instance, I don't recall very many people at the time thinking it was an awesome shrewd move to cancel the CancerCare expansion project. Even fewer people would say that now.

The NDP's terrible finances definitely drove people towards the PC's, and no doubt some of those voters had buyers remorse after they saw exactly what that meant. Most people complain about governments failing to fulfill campaign promises, but when the PC's started doing what they campaigned on, people all of a sudden started saying "oh crap, they're actually doing that? I kinda don't like them as much, but still better than the other guys"

I can definitely agree with you that some of the PC's moves were unpopular, some would say dumb, and the CancerCare expansion project is a great example of that, should never have been cancelled. But a lot of what they did was sorely needed at that time. We're on the same page overall I think, maybe different parts of the political spectrum but both able to call a spade a spade.

[esquire]

^ Agreed!

Let's talk about this proposal from an urbanism standpoint. It looks like it will really shore up the urban wall along Sherbrook, building on what the Manitoba Clinic and Women's Hospital have added to that strip. It will be interesting to see how the new facility interacts with the neighbourhood... in some respects, it feels like HSC is becoming more like a fortress in an increasingly hostile area. And not without reason, as hospital staff are demanding more security given the problems they have dealt with in recent years.

I wonder if at some point HSC might spill over to the other side of Sherbrook, beyond the few small buildings that are already there?

[bomberjet]

When my sister had her 2 children at Womens hospital. One at the new and one at the old. The staff told my brother in law not to leave late at night. Literally said to him "where tf you going at this hour?" lol