Case Study: Humber River Hospital

Location: York (Toronto), Ontario, Canada
Owner: Humber River Regional Hospital
Architect: HDR Inc., Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Project Type: New Construction - Acute Care Hospital, Health Care
Size: 1,700,000 square feet
Sustainable Features: LEED Silver Certification being pursued

Background: Humber River Hospital is one of Canada’s largest regional acute care hospitals, serving a catchment area of more than 850,000 people. The hospital currently operates on three sites with a total of 549 beds, 3,000 staff, approximately 700 physicians and 400 volunteers. Affiliated with the University of Toronto and Queen’s University, the need was identified to consolidate the three facilities into one new facility with the intention of creating a state-of-the-art lean, green, and digital facility.

Challenge: The design program for the new hospital called for increased total capacity from 549 to 656 beds including 48 critical care beds to meet growing health-care demands. It also called for more ambulatory care and clinical facilities with the concept of identifying easily accessible “portals of care” into the building and the different clinical areas. As such, this new, large facility required a flooring system that would need to hold up to the high volume of traffic from pedestrians and wheeled hospital chairs and beds. That meant the flooring would need to be not only durable, but also easy to keep clean on a daily basis without undue maintenance demands. Because of the health-care setting, the flooring could not readily harbor bacteria, mold, or mildew—meaning that easy decontamination would be needed. From a human perspective, it would need to be comfortable to walk on for patients, staff, and visitors. And of course, the color of the flooring needed to be unaffected by all of the other criteria and needs of the floor. Light colors were preferred to go with the rest of the building design which meant that cleaning would be particularly important. Further, since the hospital would be in this building for a long time, the color had to be stable and hold up as well as the flooring material itself.

Solution: Among the various materials considered and specified for this significant project, rubber flooring, not made from SBR material, was selected and used in two different colors across 300,000 square feet of floor. The areas where it was installed included high usage areas such as corridors, patient rooms, emergency rooms, cardiac wing rooms, the cancer center, and other critical areas. In addition, 17,000 linear feet of one-piece stair tread was installed in six exit stairwells. The treads included a colored insert for the visually impaired to highlight and differentiate the stair edge.

In order to meet hygiene demands, the non-SBR sheet rubber flooring was heat welded along all seams to create a continuous solution without joints that might otherwise promote bacteria growth. Further, along the walls, the edges were flash coved 6 inches up to form a seamless wall base and then capped. Inside and outside corners were appropriately formed and sealed as well. After installation, an initial cleaning was conducted and the maintenance staff was instructed on the set up and ongoing care process to minimize effort and maximize performance.

Results: The new Humber River Hospital will be easy for patients and visitors to navigate, fiscally efficient to operate, and provide a people-friendly work environment. As a result of the hospital’s lean design work, walking distances in the new hospital for staff delivering care has been reduced by more than 17 percent while most of the flooring in that area is brighter, more colorful, and easier to maintain. The new hospital will also adhere to the principles of the LEED rating system, with a goal of exceeding LEED Silver certification. The selected flooring system is helping to contribute to that certification. In addition, the new hospital will meet the requirements for Tier 1 of the City of Toronto’s Green Standard. It will be the most energy-efficient acute care hospital in North America based on ASHRAE baselines resulting in a greater than 40 percent reduction in energy consumption.