Buildings Award of Excellence
Peter Lougheed Centre Temporary COVID-19 Treatment Facility Stantec
I
Responding to immediate needs Stantec designed the ventilation 28
CANADIAN CONSULTING ENGINEER
“The team was able to rise to the occasion under difficult circumstances and a very short timeline.” - Jury
Those building the structure wore N95 respiratory masks at all times and maintained physical distancing whenever possible.
system with airborne transmission of COVID-19 in mind, configuring the airflow to travel from clean to dirty, with fresh air supplied near health-care workers and exhaust grilles near patients. The system was configured as a 100% outside-air system, with no recirculation, and
used an upblast exhaust fan and high-plume stack to prevent entrapment of gases in the building. The facility was designed to limit the spread of the virus within the hospital and to the surrounding community. Although physically connected to the main hospital, the September/October 2021
PHOTOS COU RT E SY STA N T EC.
n March 2020, Calgary accounted for 63% of Alberta’s confirmed cases of COVID-19. Stantec, Alberta Health Services (AHS), Sprung Structures, Faulkbuilt and CANA Construction worked together to build a temporary treatment facility at the Peter Lougheed Centre (PLC) to accommodate the predicted pandemic peak in May 2020. Communication and co-ordination between all disciplines, physicians and nurses were critical. The more than 750-m2 pandemic response unit (PRU) was designed and entirely constructed in less than three weeks, providing an additional 70 treatment spaces for patients. This project was a first for Stantec, AHS and the provincial government, due to its urgency. While it is a temporary structure, it operates much like a fully functioning hospital. And unlike other alternate care facilities (ACFs) built in convention centres during this pandemic, which only provide bed space, this project provided a fully functioning hospital unit, including medical gases, proper air exchange rates, nurse call and a direct connection to PLC’s emergency department.
