The $3.6 billion South Niagara Hospital reaches its target after one year of construction and is on schedule

It’s been just over a year since groundbreaking on the massive South Niagara Hospital (SNH) project, and the construction site is a hive of activity with work currently underway on the first three floors of the building.

EllisDon Infrastructure Healthcare (EDIH) is the consortium building the facility in Niagara Falls at the corner of Montrose and Biggar Road.

In May, construction began on the superstructure of the $3.6 billion, 12-story, 120,000-square-foot facility.

“We’re pouring a lot of concrete right now, so we’re in the middle of structural work,” said Robin Jervis, general superintendent at EllisDon. “We’re working on level one, level two and level three simultaneously.”

Ben Embir, planning and design manager for the South Niagara Hospital project team, said construction will take four years, followed by commissioning and move-in. The project is expected to be largely completed by early 2028 and is currently on schedule and on budget.

“I would imagine that the concrete work will probably continue pretty steadily until the end of 2025,” Embir said. “Shortly thereafter, work will gradually continue with other mechanical and electrical fittings of the building, followed by the building envelope and then, over the next three years, the interior work.”

Upwards? Elevators and staircases are taking shape

In addition, elevator shafts and stairwells have been installed and most of the services on site, including water mains and storm water and sewer lines, have been completed.

The electrical work is also progressing.

“It’s a design-build project, so we’ve completed the 100 percent design development phase and are currently working on the 50 percent construction documentation phase,” said Mike Dunford, senior project manager at EllisDon. “We should be done with that in October. We’ve done seven rounds of user group meetings with Niagara Health to finalize the design, and we have one more round to go.”

The hospital will have 469 single-bed rooms and will feature centers of excellence in complex care, aging wellness and stroke. It will also have a 24-hour emergency department that is three times the size of the emergency department at the current Niagara Falls location.

SNH is on track to achieve WELL certification, which includes incorporating design elements that support the health and well-being of all hospital users.

“Our overarching, unique offering and vision is that we want to be the first facility in Canada to be WELL certified,” said Embir. “We know that WELL has been applied in the past in work settings. However, to our knowledge, it has never actually been applied or adapted in a healthcare setting… Recently, a healthcare facility in the United States became WELL certified.”

Excavation for the foundation and basement is now complete but was quite a challenge. Around 1,250 steel piles were driven into the rock to support the building’s foundation.

“The earthworks were a little difficult,” said Robin. “The building is basically built on soft material, clay. A conventional foundation is not possible, so we had to put in a lot of piles.”

The building will be constructed on a 50 hectare site and will have a large floor space.

“We made the building quite compact,” said Embir. “The footprint of the building, reaching the ground floor, is around 250,000 square feet, which is not small but quite compact in shape.”

“The first three floors are the podium mass. They include some of our more well-known acute care and outpatient programs, so things like the emergency department and diagnostic imaging and surgical services. We have eight operating rooms as well as a number of other programs. The top half of the building… the top seven floors are represented by an inpatient tower.”

Number of employees will increase in the coming months

Currently, there are an average of more than 200 workers on site each day. During peak periods, more than 1,000 skilled workers are expected to be on site every day.

“There is a period of time when we will still have the formwork crews here and we will be down there doing the finishing work. We expect to have between 1,000 and 1,400 crews working here at any one time,” Jervis said. “By the end of 2025, we should have a significant number of crews here.”

Next year the building will actually take shape.

“Once we get to a certain stage of construction, we start the interior work, so we have to work underground. Then we start the bricks on the lower floors. We start the drywall and also start the rough ins for the mechanical and electrical systems,” Jervis said. “In the spring, you’ll see some curtain walling going up and some precast units going in behind the curtain wall. Then we’ll see the building start to take shape as the exterior shell takes shape.”

Follow the author on X/Twitter @DCN_Angela