Abbotsford Regional Hospital is facing months of renovations to replace hundreds of meters of leaky copper pipes, only seven years after it opened, CTV News has learned.
And 25 rooms were damaged a month ago when a crew working on those pipes opened a valve, releasing water that shut down three elevators for as long as 10 days, hospital officials confirm.
“[The pipe] leaks,” said general manager Bruce Belsher. “It’s more than we had just a couple problems. There is something wrong with the two-inch pipe.”
The company that built the hospital, PCL Constructors Westcoast, didn’t answer our questions about what the sourcing of the pipes is, or what exactly is wrong with them.
Watchdog group Integrity BC says it's concerned because of problems with another PCL project – Victoria’s Johnson Street Bridge, which is delayed and has overruns because of problems with the steel that was fabricated in China.
“It’s disgraceful. I think anyone who is participating with the government needs to be accountable for the product they’re making,” Integrity BC’s Dermod Travis said.
Crews are replacing 730 meters of pipes section by section at night, so patients don’t see most of the work, said hospital director Valerie Spurrell, though hot or cold water has to be shut off during the process.
The construction is contained in tents, and there was no obvious sign of work done on rooms visited by CTV News where the pipes had been replaced. Hospital officials said the hospital is running normally despite the renovations.
The flood started when a worker opened a valve, and the water knocked out three out of 12 elevators and damaged several offices, a night pharmacy room, a pharmacist office, a conference room and the gift shop. It was all fixed within 10 days and patient care wasn’t affected, said Spurrell.
The building was opened in 2008 as a state-of-the-art $355-million facility. It was the first acute care hospital to be built as a public private partnership, known as a P3, and operated by P3 Partner AHA Access Health Abbotsford Ltd. That means a private company operates the hospital, and Fraser Health is like a tenant.
The P3 partner will complete the renovations at no cost to the taxpayer, said Spurrell. And the P3 partner will pay Fraser Health $28,000 to compensate for the time the rooms weren’t available, she said.
“As soon as the issue was identified, they are addressing it,” said Spurrell.
