At a critical care facility like the Walter C. Mackenzie Health Sciences Centre, care services must continue seamlessly during construction. The University of Alberta Hospital is a referral center for Western and Northern Canada and is one of Canada’s leading academic health sciences centers with a reputation for research, innovation and patient-centered care. In collaboration with the hospital, our team upgraded the existing dialysis and laboratory type II water systems all while keeping the facility fully operational so patients could continue to receive the highest level of care. 

Relationships and communication were key to completing demolition of old piping and equipment, and procurement and installation of new piping and systems across multiple levels of operational areas in a busy, active health care facility.

We arranged for temporary water purification services to keep the Intensive Care Unit's (ICU) , dialysis wards, and laboratories operational during construction when the existing system was taken offline and replaced. The critical nature of this temporary system required a high level of monitoring and relied heavily on our quality management processes.

As the project neared the startup and commissioning phase, the COVID-19 pandemic hit Canada. The travel restrictions in place did not allow the team to bring the system vendor’s technicians to the site for startup. In response, we worked with the vendor to subcontract out the startup of the unit to a competitor located closer to the site. This unconventional approach had challenges; however, the team persevered and successfully commissioned the equipment.

A commitment to quality, service and collaboration allowed PCL to successfully deliver new purified water systems for 26 ICU beds, 24 dialysis units and 60 laboratory points of use for another long-term client.