Infrastructure Ontario and St. Michael's Hospital announced two days ago that three companies have been shortlisted to design, build and finance the construction of a new 17-storey patient care tower at the corner of Queen and Victoria Streets and the renovation of approximately 150,000 square feet of existing hospital space.

Based on a request for qualifications process that began in December 2012, the following three companies were shortlisted:

- St. Michael's Partnership

• Bondfield Construction Company Limited
• NORR Limited / Farrow Partnership
• Rocklyn Capital Inc.

- Integrated Team Solutions

• EllisDon Corporation
• Kasian Architecture
• EllisDon Capital Inc. / Fengate Capital Inc.

- PCL Partnerships

• PCL Constructors Canada Inc
• B+H Architects / Silver Thomas Hanley
• TD Securities Inc.

The companies will be invited to respond to a request for proposals, expected to be issued in summer 2013. Each includes a developer, design and construction firms, and a financial advisor.

The new tower will allow St. Michael's Hospital to relocate patient beds from an 85-year-old wing and provide larger space for programs that treat some of the most critically ill patients from across Ontario. These programs include patients from the medical-surgical intensive care unit and the largest adult cystic fibrosis program in North America.

Five new operating rooms will be added to the hospital, each large enough to include state-of-the-art medical imaging equipment. These hybrid operating rooms will allow surgeons to perform minimally invasive, image-guided or catheter-based procedures and undertake open surgery in the same operating room.

Redevelopment work will also provide enlarged, state-of-the-art inpatient facilities for orthopedic surgery, oncology and respirology - including the cystic fibrosis program - as well as critical care space for the coronary and medical-surgical units.

The current emergency department will also be expanded. It was originally designed to accommodate 45,000 patient visits a year, but now accommodates more than 70,000 a year - a number that continues to grow with the population. This expansion will allow St. Michael's to continue to fulfill its mandate as a regional trauma centre.

Infrastructure Ontario and the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care are working with St. Michael's Hospital to expand and renovate the hospital, which will remain publicly owned and controlled.

Source: Infrastructure Ontario