The official opening and move into the new Humboldt and District Health Complex will now occur in March - approximately five months after it was hoped the move would occur.
"We expect to move in during the month of March. That's our final goal," said Kelvin Fisher, director of rural health services for the Saskatoon Health Region (SHR) last week.
In mid-October of this year, the SHR announced that the move would occur sometime after October 30, when their goal for some time had been to move in sometime during that month.
At that time, they said that planning to move into the facility, which will include the Humboldt District Hospital, as well as Community Health Services, in October was a bit too optimistic.
At that point, the construction of the building was about 95 per cent complete, noted Fisher. Now, at the end of November, that figure has not changed a lot - it's at about 97 to 98 per cent.
"We're so close to completion, we can almost taste it," Fisher said.
They are still testing mechanical systems and doing some inspections for deficiencies in the building - the latter is nearly entirely complete, Fisher said.
"We are very, very close to... substantial completion," he said.
However, a delay with one part of the build will cost them some more time.
"Some flooring needs to be replaced," Fisher said, "and it will take six weeks (to get here)."
The flooring to be replaced is in a few different spots around the building, Fisher noted, declining to specify exactly where.
The delay in the arrival of the new flooring will put the project right into the Christmas season - a time of year that is not optimal for planning a move.
Right now, they are expecting to bring the project to substantial completion by January 15. That means that by that date, all the building deficiencies will have been addressed, the architect will have signed off on the project, and the general contractor will have met all the terms and conditions of the building project.
After that point, as the owner of the building, the SHR will begin to move in.
The installation of their systems - telephones and information technology - will occur, and medical equipment they purchased directly and some furnishings will be moved into the building.
It will take them between six to eight weeks to install and test everything, making sure it's all in working order, before the major move involving services and patients occurs.
"We possibly could move in earlier, but for right now, it's... sometime in March," Fisher said. "That's what people can look forward to - a move, a grand opening and tours (of the facility) in March."
A grand opening committee has already been struck, and they are starting on plans for the event - the only thing they are missing is an exact date.
The public will be informed, Fisher promised, when the move is imminent.
If not for the delay with the flooring, substantial completion of the building would have been reached in late November or early December, it was noted.
Fisher said he is aware that some people will be disappointed that moving into the new facility is taking longer than they had planned.
"We could have been overly optimistic in our time frames," Fisher noted. "There's no question we were. We were looking at the best-case scenario."
The project is the construction of a 70,000 square foot building, Fisher pointed out, comparing it to building 70 1,000 square foot houses.
Even when constructing houses, there are not many cases when the family moves in as planned, he noted. There are nearly always delays.
And for the most part, this project has gone very smoothly, Fisher agreed.
"We've had very, very few issues," he said, in the over two years since construction began.
Everyone involved in this project - the general contractor, the architects and the SHR - wants to make sure that they do their due diligence and hand over a building that is complete, Fisher said.
"We are being extra cautious and making sure systems are operating so we don't have problems," he stated.
There will likely be some issues that will not surface until they move into the building, Fisher admitted, but they are trying to minimize those "and do as much of the pre-move installations as diligently as we can, so we can focus on what we need to when we move in - patient care."
What the SHR did not want, Fisher indicated, was to move everyone into the building, then discover there were things like flooring that needed to be fixed.
"We did not want to prematurely move patients in, and have to move patients and equipment around (while things were fixed)," Fisher said. "Our objective here is to get it done the first time."
It is a beautiful building, Fisher feels.
"The whole building is going to be tremendous," he noted. The move, he added, "can't happen fast enough for me, and I know other people are saying they feel the same way."
