NHS Health Care Complex & Walker Family Cancer Centre Niagara, Ontario, Canada

Plenary Group is the consortium lead, equity investor and financial arranger for the project.

Location: St. Catharines, ON
Client: Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care / Niagara Health System
Value: (NPV): $759 million
Builder: PCL Constructors Canada Inc.
Architect: Bregman + Hamann / Silver Thomas Hanley
Services: Johnson Controls
Financial Close: March 27, 2009
Completion Date: November 2012
Contract Terms: 33 years, Design-Build-Finance-Maintain
Awards: Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships' Award of Merit for Project Financing in 2009, ReNew Canada Top 100 Projects 2011

Green Design Elements

The new facility is designed for LEED® Certification. Environmental features include energy efficient lighting, cooling and heating, which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as operating costs of the facility. The landscape also incorporates natural design features such as a walking path, gardens and pond in order to promote healing.

User-focused Design

Plenary Health led an extensive design development process with NHS clinical staff, as well as related health agencies, to incorporate their input into the final design. The end result is a hospital which is designed around users and seeks to make the hospital experience as comfortable as possible. For example, the design maximizes windows and natural light to make the spaces more airy for patients and staff. The facility also includes an innovative design approach for the Cancer Centre. It helps patients feel less isolated by using lead block construction and special hallway configurations to eliminate the need to physically seal the radiation suites.

This was the first true DBFM AFP hospital under the Infrastructure Ontario AFP model and the design process was therefore, relatively uncharted. Plenary helped develop a process which generated dialogue on what the hospital really wanted, without threatening the fairness of the procurement process. The solution was to engage the senior user team members and present issues clearly to the hospital and the PDC team, and this standard is now being used on all IO DBFM projects. The outcome of this process was a design which exceeded the expectations of the client, and provided a more efficient footprint that will reduce walking distances (and therefore ineffective time) for the staff who will work in the facility.

Plenary was faced with reaching Financial Close on this project in the period immediately following the global financial crisis of 2008, at which time, the committed financing package the team had developed during the RFP period fell away. The team worked tirelessly for six months with the Sponsors to provide a financing solution for the project. Due to the sophistication of the Plenary team, the strength of the relationship with NHS and also with lenders, Plenary delivered a fully committed financing solution that remained within the parameters of its initial proposal, and the project reached Financial Close in March 2009.