It was a year ago today, Sept. 12, 2023, when dignitaries broke ground in Cloverdale for the new Surrey hospital. Several politicians and local leaders were on hand to turn some sod in a symbolic showing of the beginning of the project.
One year later, the grounds are a hive of activity with hundreds of workers on site and all manner of heavy machinery, from pile drivers to excavators to heavy-duty dump trucks, working the construction zone.
Provincial Health Minister Adian Dix told the Cloverdale Reporter the project is moving along smoothly.
Dix said EllisDon, the company that won the contract to build the hospital, was doing and “excellent job” and he said they’ve been working on a lot of wall preparation at the moment.
“It’s on track. There is very significant construction taking place,” he said. “EllisDon is one of the best hospital construction companies in all of North America. They are on the case and we’re really impressed by the progress made.”
Dix called the construction project “massive” and said it will build up from the current 250-or-so workers on site to, at its height, about 1,500 workers in about 2028.
“The level and the extent of the project is extraordinary,” Dix added. “It’s the biggest hospital project in the history of Fraser Health.”
The new hospital will have 168 beds and there will also be a cancer centre that’ll be able to perform about 100,000 cancer treatments per year.
He said the project is the only one of its kinds in B.C. at the moment, and there are 28 major projects going province-wide.
Dix said he was unaware if there were significant issues with the soil, as there were with the construction of the new Cloverdale Sport and Ice Complex. The arena was delayed because of challenges workers faced while trying to install the foundation piles, which have since been resolved.
He did say, however, that the hospital was being built to the “highest levels of seismic safety” incorporating the latest technology in the field.
“What we are seeing is new walls to support the building construction of the hospital that are in place now that go deep into the earth,” Dix explained. “What that means is a hospital that will be safe and secure and ready for anything that might happen in our seismic zone of B.C.”
With KPU across the street, Dix noted there may be an opportunity to make the new medical centre a teaching hospital.
“Absolutely, our links with KPU are growing,” he added. “The relationship between KPU and this new hospital will be profound, as it will with the new medical school at SFU [Surrey campus], and the relationship between KPU and health care can only grow.”
Mike Starchuk, the MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale, said he was on a tour of the construction site in early September. He also said the work was going well.
He noted EllisDon is running the site seven days a week, with the expectation of long weekends.
“They are currently doing all the stuff that’s underground that nobody’s ever going to see,” said Starchuk. “The initial work has been completed and now they’re going onto the next steps.”
The new Cloverdale hospital was originally expected to cost $1.66 billion, but that number ballooned to $2.88 billion. The completion date for the project was pushed back to 2029, from 2027, and it’s expected to open to the public in 2030. The Provincial Government cited inflation and delays in the companies’ abilities to get workers and materials to complete projects as factors in both.
