Agenda
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Pre-Conference Workshop
November 11, 2026
Day 1 – Main Conference
November 12, 2026
Registration Opens and Breakfast Served
In Conversation with MOH, MoLTC, MOI: Working Together to Deliver Major Healthcare Projects in Ontario
David ReederDirector, Health Capital Operations Branch, Ministry of HealthGovernment of Ontario
Gillian SteeveAssistant Deputy Minister, Ministry of Long-Term Care, CapitalGovernment of Ontario
James StewartAssistant Deputy Minister, Ministry of Infrastructure, Capital Delivery DivisionGovernment of Ontario
Ian McDermottVice President, Facilities and Capital DevelopmentSinai Health
Morning Networking Break
John MarshmanVice President, Facilities and Infrastructure, Chief Redevelopment OfficerSouthlake Health
York Region and southern Simcoe Country have one of the fastest growing and aging populations in Ontario. Southlake Health is responding by bringing services closer to home with a distributed health network of advanced care centres that will be supported by two acute anchor sites, one that is being redeveloped and the other a new build.
This session will explore why this shift from mega hospital to embedded community services is happening, Southlake’s strategic plan and expected outcomes for the health system and patients in the region.
Capital Renewal: Identifying Opportunities to Drive Efficiencies, Achieve Cost Savings and Advance Sustainability Goals at your Healthcare Organization
Dmitry KapustinSenior Director, RedevelopmentUniversity Health Network
Jonathan RodriguesManager, Special ProjectsPCL Constructors Canada Inc.
- Developing a renewal strategy that will improve performance and extend the life of the healthcare facility
- Using AI and advanced technology to assist with decision-making on which projects to pursue
- Identifying small projects with a big ROI and that promote greater sustainability and resilience
Networking Lunch
Afternoon Keynote
Collaboration by Design: Creating the Conditions for High Performance in Healthcare Infrastructure Projects
Suzanne FoxCo-FounderCollaborative Coaching Group
- Assessing collaborative readiness across the project system
- Moving beyond individual mindset to examine relationships, structures, incentives and shared capability
- Identifying strengths, gaps and risks before they affect project performance
- Creating the conditions for successful collaboration
- Establishing safety, clarity, alignment and the capacity to repair
- Developing shared purpose while respecting different organizational interests
- Clarifying roles, accountabilities, expectations and decision rights
- Building collaborative capability across the project lifecycle
- Strengthening trust, communication and collective decision-making
- Surfacing assumptions and addressing tensions early
- Supporting performance, adaptation and resilience under pressure
- Embedding agreements and practices that sustain collaboration
- Learning and evolving together
- Consolidating learning across partners and organizations
- Strengthening the system’s ability to collaborate on future work
Brandon Bayley-HayVice President, DeliveryB3 Strategic Transformations
Clinical planning for major healthcare redevelopment begins years before equipment is purchased, yet the original operational and clinical intent can easily become diluted as projects move through design, procurement, construction, and implementation. This session will explore how hospitals can preserve that intent, reduce risk, improve value, and support stronger capital project outcomes.
Learning Objectives:
- Understanding how early procurement engagement can help preserve clinical and operational intent throughout long redevelopment timelines.
- Exploring the role of Group Purchasing Organizations in providing market intelligence, procurement expertise, and national buying power to support capital planning
- Examining how F&E planners can serve as a critical bridge between clinicians, designers, procurement teams, consultants, contractors, and GPO partners.
- Identifying strategies to reduce procurement risk, improve capital value, and support more coordinated project outcomes.
Afternoon Networking Break
Afternoon Tracks
*Choose Track 1 or Track 2*
Design and Construction of Healthcare Facilities
Separating Fact from Fiction
“Ask Us Anything” about Modern Methods of Construction
Sabrina FiorellinoCEOFero International Inc.
Cooper LanePresidentTrue Volumetric Corp.
Eisa LeePartner ArchitectxL Architecture + Modular Design
Max GennisPartnerWeirFoulds LLP
Mike MorganVice President, Healthcare InfrastructureBuild Nova Scotia
This interactive “Ask Us Anything” town hall will separate facts from fiction on modular and modern methods of construction in healthcare. Leaders in the field will address common misconceptions, share practical insights, and explore where these approaches can add value.
- Clarify how modern methods of construction differ from conventional healthcare infrastructure delivery models
- Examine key considerations around procurement, design, risk, sustainability, feasibility, and project readiness
- Identify where modern construction approaches can support speed, flexibility, and cost certainty
- Assess whether these methods are a strong fit for upcoming healthcare builds, expansions, or redevelopment projects
Track 2 | The People Side of Healthcare Infrastructure Projects
Aligning People, Processes and Project Resources: Strategies for Small to Mid-Sized Healthcare Organizations
Alison Wesley JamesVice President, Capital DevelopmentLake of Woods District Hospital
David LeblancCo-FounderCollaborative Coaching Group
Robert HofmannVice President, Redevelopment and Capital ProjectsBrant Community Healthcare System
- Designing Teams, Governance and Collaborative Capability
- Assessing the expertise, relationships and collaborative capability needed at different stages of the project
- Determining when to build internal capacity versus engaging external consultants and partners
- Understanding how project location, funding and organizational context influence staffing decisions
- Creating governance structures that clarify accountability while strengthening collaboration across organizational boundaries
- Designing Conversations That Move Projects Forward
- Creating user group meetings that build shared understanding and improve decision-making
- Maintaining engagement throughout the project lifecycle, particularly during periods of competing priorities and project pressure
- Exploring when virtual, in-person and hybrid approaches best support meaningful collaboration
- Capturing learning throughout the project to strengthen future collaboration and organizational capability
5-Minute Transition Break
Special Focus on Women’s Health: How to Design Programs and Spaces that Better Serve Women at Every Stage of Life
Dominique O’RiordanDirector, Capital & Planning StrategySinai Health
Alia BacchusSenior Functional Programmer Archus Canada
Women’s health needs evolve across the lifespan, requiring healthcare systems, programs, and care environments that can evolve alongside them. This session will explore emerging global trends in women’s health, examining how different regions are responding to changing needs through innovative approaches to care, service delivery, and facility design. Bringing the discussion closer to home, Sinai Health and Archus Canada will share perspectives from the Canadian healthcare landscape and explore how purpose-built programs and spaces can better support women at every stage of life.
When the Shoe Fits: Using Standards to Get the Right Health Care Facility at the Right Place at the Right Time
Gordon BurillPresidentTeegor Consulting
Stasia BogdenDirector, Capital PlanningUnity Health
Martha HarveySenior Director, Operational ReadinessUniversity Health Network
Taurai KurebwaProject Manager, Health Care & Well-beingCSA Group
Health care facilities are among the most expensive and complex buildings Canada constructs, and the cost of building them keeps climbing. Total capital expenditures in the health care and social assistance sector have grown sharply over recent years, a trend the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated.[1] At the same time, construction-price inflation has eroded the buying power of that spending with infrastructure costing substantially more to build today. When these costs rise, technical standards become an easy target and are blamed for driving up square footage and specification costs. However, CSA Z8000 series of standards exists to be part of the solution for this problem: getting the right facility, built or assessed the right way, to the right place at the right time.
This moderated panel brings together subject matter experts behind three published standards. CSA Z8000, the foundational standard, sets the planning, design, and construction requirements for Canadian health care facilities. CSA Z8003 guides design studies and post-occupancy evaluation, so that decisions are tested against real-world performance. CSA Z8008, the newest in the series, provides a methodology for assessing whether existing facilities can still support current and future care.
Together, the panelists will explore:
- The Right Facility — matching infrastructure to need without overbuilding
- Requirements for Safety — the core safety requirements that cannot be compromised
- Stories from the Field — where these standards have demonstrated their practical value
Networking Reception
Day 2 – Main Conference
November 13, 2026
Registration Opens and Breakfast Served
Maged AhmedDirector, Equipment Planning – Canada RegionOneEQ
Jeannie GandhamDirector Activation, Opening & Stabilization, IT Program New St Paul’s Hospital ProjectProvidence Health Care
Special Focus on Standardization
Ontario Progress Report: Examining Opportunities for Further Standardization within Acute Care Settings
Danielle JaneAssistant Deputy Minister, Hospitals and Capital Division, Ministry of HealthGovernment of Ontario
Tim EastwoodSenior Principal, Health Sector Lead, Canada EastStantec Architecture Ltd.
As the UK New Hospital Programme advances, standardisation has become a critical enabler of faster, more efficient, and more consistent healthcare infrastructure delivery. Moving beyond design templates and technical specifications, standardization is increasingly shaping how hospitals are planned, designed, governed, and delivered at scale.
The session will highlight the importance of collaboration, governance and stakeholder engagement in embedding standardisation across complex programmes while maintaining flexibility to respond to local clinical and operational requirements. Attendees will gain insight into the challenges, opportunities, and cultural changs required to successfully adopt standardisation at scale.
Morning Coffee Break
Are We Optimizing the Means and Losing Sight of the Ends? Reimagining Where Care is Delivered and the Infrastructure Needed to Support it
Tyler ChalkExecutive Vice President and Chief Strategy OfficerSouthlake Health
Amar SinghResident Health and Housing LeadR Labs
Lori BradyVice President, Integrated Care & System PartnershipsSunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
David HoManaging Director, National Lead, Health & Public SectorAccenture Infrastructure & Capital Projects
Stuart ElgiePartner, ArchitectDIALOG
Sejdi MuharemiSenior Project ManagerEllisDon Corporation
Dr. Allan OkrainecSurgical DirectorUniversity Health Network
Kendra WillisDirector, Lean Value Stream DesignUniversity Health Network
UHN is embarking upon its largest capital project to date. A new 15-storey surgical tower at Toronto Western Hospital—known as Project Aspire. The addition of this state-of-the-art tower will help reduce the surgical backlog and add 82 beds to the healthcare system.
This session will examine key aspects of the project from design and construction innovation to anticipated impacts on patients and surgical outcomes.
Networking Lunch
Project Spotlight
Bringing Benefits of Nature to the Bedside: A Special Look at the Design and Delivery of the World’s First Critical Care Rooftop Garden
Dr. Tom BestClinical DirectorNHS
Malcolm HankeyDirector, Project ManagementBlue Light Management
Terry PriceEngineerWSP
Earlier this year, King’s College Hospital in London, UK opened the doors to the world’s first critical care garden. Situated on the hospital’s rooftop, this innovative, truly human-centred project will provide patients will the opportunity to experience the therapeutic effects of nature.
Panelists will share how this project came together from planning and funding through to technology and the garden itself—as well as how this will help to address challenges for critical care patients including delirium and long hospital stay.
Matthew HickeyPartnerTwo Row Architect
How can Indigenous principles and values reshape healthcare environments—not simply through visual representation, but through the ways spaces are conceived, designed and experienced?
This session will explore how Indigenous ways of knowing, being and relating to land and community can inform healthcare design across very different project contexts. Drawing on examples including the purpose-built Anishnawbe Health Toronto, the new South Niagara Hospital, and the retrofit of St. Peter’s Hospital in Hamilton, participants will examine how principles such as connection to land, community engagement, cultural safety, reciprocity and holistic understandings of wellness can influence design decisions.
The session will invite healthcare leaders, planners and designers to consider how these approaches can move beyond symbolic gestures to create environments that support belonging, dignity, healing and stronger relationships with Indigenous communities.
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Recognize Indigenous principles as a foundation for healthcare design
- Identify how concepts including relationship to land, community, nature, cultural safety and holistic wellness can influence the planning and experience of healthcare environments
- Apply Indigenous design thinking across different project types
- Compare how Indigenous principles and community knowledge can inform a stand-alone Indigenous health centre, a major new hospital build and the retrofit of an existing healthcare facility
- Move from representation to meaningful integration
- Identify practical opportunities to engage Indigenous communities and embed Indigenous knowledge and values into healthcare planning, design and decision-making from the earliest stages of a project
Afternoon Break
Afternoon Tracks
*Choose Track 1 or Track 2*
Track 1 | Modernizing the Planning, Design and Delivery of Healthcare Facilities
Beyond the Blueprint: Using Simulation to Bring Future Healthcare Spaces to Life: Integrating Simulation Throughout the Redevelopment Journey
Elisa CostaArchitect, Senior AssociateStantec
Alison DoddsSimulation EducatorThe Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids)
Krista Abu KhalilSenior Project Manager Clinical Reinvention
Project HorizonSickKids
As healthcare organizations undertake increasingly complex redevelopment projects, simulation is emerging as a powerful tool to bridge the gap between design intent and real-world operations.
Drawing on lessons learned from healthcare infrastructure initiatives, panelists will share how simulation helps architects, clinicians, family advisors, project teams, and operational leaders test workflows, validate design decisions, identify latent safety risks, and optimize spaces before they are built.
Attendees will leave with practical strategies for leveraging simulation as a catalyst for collaboration, innovation, and better infrastructure outcomes, by:
- Discovering how simulation can drive better redevelopment outcomes from concept to occupancy
- Uncovering how simulation informs critical design and operational decisions
- Learning from real-world redevelopment experiences and lessons learned
- Exploring the power of collaboration in shaping future healthcare spaces.
- Identifying new opportunities to harness simulation throughout future transformation initiatives.
Track 2 | The People Side of Healthcare Infrastructure Projects
Taking Neuroinclusive Approach to Healthcare Facility Design
Adrianne GilleseInterior Designer, Edmonton LeadWalterFedy
5-Minute Transition Break
Dr. Andrew BoozaryExecutive Director, Gattuso Centre for Social MedicineUniversity Health Network
Jason MilesLived Experience AdvocateDunn House Resident
Kevin HutchinsonPrincipalMontgomery Sisam Architects
Last year, we learned about Dunn House, Canada’s first ever Social Medicine Housing initiative. The model is an integration of housing and healthcare for individuals experiencing homelessness and who regularly visit emergency departments.
Since opening in 2024, Dunn House has had a significant impact on the lives of residents and the broader health system. The frequency of visits to the ER and the length of stay have both decreased. This session will focus on how this model will be expanded with support from federal government, and the Province of Ontario to continue this work with a focus on providing much needed support to at-risk seniors in the Parkdale community.
THE LAST WORD | THOUGHT LEADERSHIP ROUNDTABLE
Trends, Signals and Wildcards: What’s on the Horizon for Healthcare Infrastructure in 2027
Susan NeilPresident Hanscomb
Sharat ChandraVice President, Planning Transformation and Infrastructure Fraser Health
Sean SmithsonRegional Vice President - TorontoPomerleau
On average healthcare infrastructure projects take 8-10 years to complete. During this period change and transformation are inevitable. Project teams need to remain nimble in the face of cost escalation, supply chain risk, geopolitical uncertainty, demographic shifts and technological leaps.
This session will explore where clear trends are forming at this moment in time, early signals to watch that could have a bearing on projects, as well as potential wildcards to consider.