A photo taken last week where the future Health Sciences teaching space will be (Photo: Facebook / Prasad Panda)

By Shaun Penner

Hospital Progress

Minister of Infrastructure provides update on hospital progress

Sep 3, 2019 | 12:00 PM

Alberta’s Minister of Infrastructure is pleased with the progress of the new hospital in Grande Prairie.

Prasad Panda toured the facility for the second time last week and posted an update of the progress of the Grande Prairie Regional Hospital to his Facebook page.

He says there are a lot of positives to come out of the work done over the last couple of months.

“Because I was there eight weeks ago and in the last eight weeks, lots has happened,” said Panda. “Clark Builders is the new contractor and so far, they have worked 268,000-man hours and they have (made) substantial progress in construction.”

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“But I am still closely monitoring the balance of work to be completed, to ensure there are no cost of schedule overruns.That’s our focus for now.”

Though he is pleased with the progress, Panda was still unable to provide any timeline for when work might be completed, but does say he is working to be more up front about what stage the hospital is at with Grande Prairie and area residents.

“I want to be more transparent on this. So, as we closely monitor, as something comes up, I will share during my next visit,” said Panda. “But otherwise, I am very confident they are all working hard to complete this as soon as possible.”

Clark Builders took over the project from Graham Construction late in 2018, after the latter was ousted by the NDP government. At the time of Clark taking over the project, a budget of $763 million was announced by the government. Panda says Clark is still within that budget.

The minister says he will make another stop in the Swan City in another 6-8 weeks to check on the progress of construction. In the meantime, he understands the frustration of area residents with the large number of delays this project has been inundated with and hopes that we won’t have to wait too much longer for the hospital to finally be ready.

“First, I want to thank the people of the Grande Prairie region for their patience with this project. It’s almost there,” said Panda. “I’ve already made two trips in the last three months, and I am going to be there again in another 6-8 weeks. I’ll share the incremental progress during my next trip.”