Construction on the Children’s Hospital of Saskatchewan is on time and on budget, officials say.
The building, attached to the Royal University Hospital, is one-third complete and most of the major structural concrete is installed, the Saskatoon Health Region said Friday.
The project is on schedule, set to open in 2019, and sticking to its current $285-million budget.
“Once the building structure is completed early in the new year — roughly around the end of February — we’re going to take that smallest crane off the site,” said Craig Ayers, the health region’s project director for the hospital, referring to one of two cranes currently on site.
“We’re getting really good progress. We’re hitting our targets on the structure. We’re, overall, (at) 33 per cent completion and things are looking good at this point.”
Structural work on the west side of the hospital will begin in January, and the entire shell of the building is expected to be completed by the spring.
Graham Construction says enough concrete will be used to fill eight and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools once the hospital is complete.
Health Minister Jim Reiter said the project will help the province recruit pediatricians and alleviate pressures on health-care systems across Saskatchewan.
“When you’re putting more capacity into the overall system — even though it’s for a targeted demographic when it’s for children and babies and mothers — it’s going to obviously alleviate the stress on the system,” Reiter said.
The Children’s Hospital Foundation of Saskatchewan has so far raised $54 million for the project. The foundation hopes to raise a total $75 million before the hospital opens in 2019.
