Key takeaways:
- EllisDon Infrastructure Healthcare intends to draw out of the tender process.
- The QEII New Generation project will let outdated facilities at the Victoria General Hospital in Halifax close.
One of the two companies pre-qualified to bid on the Halifax Infirmary redevelopment plan is drawing out.
A representative for the Nova Scotia government approved Friday afternoon that officials with EllisDon Infrastructure Healthcare stated that they planned to withdraw from the tender process.
That leaves Plenary PCL Health as the best remaining consortium backed by the ex-Liberal government to bid on the vast health-care construction scheme with more beds, operating rooms, and a new cancer center.
The government representative said the region would continue with the tender process for the project to be made using the public-private partnership (P3) model and that the offer from Plenary PCL Health would not automatically be endorsed.
A spokesperson for EllisDon did not reply to requests for comment.
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The news follows reporting by CBC before this week that the awarding of the tender, which was thought to happen in late spring, has been postponed for some months. A government representative attributed the decision to “current market situations.”
Although it’s not obvious what that means, internal documents received by CBC show population projections used in 2015 to help design the redevelopment project have been outstripped by the boom in new citizens coming to Nova Scotia in the last two years.
Urged project changes
Revised data from 2021 denotes the region’s population will reach 1,069,731 by 2031, according to the documents. That is a 13.5 percent increase over the population figures used during the planning cycle. The papers call that a “modest estimate.”
To deal with this difference, the documents suggest expanding the redevelopment projects to have four more operating rooms, 144 more inpatient beds, and adding a new emergency unit to the plans.
Source – cbc.ca
