The largest Children’s Treatment Centre in Ontario, ErinoakKids provides treatment, rehabilitation and support services to children with disabilities. It is located on 3 sites: Mississauga, Brampton, and Oakville.
The Brampton facility is the largest at 125,700 sf on a 8.5 acre greenfield site provides rehabilitation treatment areas, IBI (Intensive Behavioral Intervention) and ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) pods, 23 bed respite facility, gymnasiums, therapeutic pool, education suite, drama/music/art therapy spaces, family resource facility, central equipment depot and support facilities. The centres in Mississauga (103,900 sf on a 6 acre greenfield site) and Oakville (80,900 sf on a 5.2 acre site) include rehabilitation treatment areas, IBI and ABA pods at the Mississauga site and IBI pods at the Oakville site, gymnasiums, education suites, drama/music/art therapy spaces, family resource facilities, central equipment depots, and support facilities.
Part of Parkin’s role as PDC consultants for all three sites was to lead a multi-disciplinary consultant team, including functional programmers, engineers, accessibility consultants, ergonomists, food service consultants, landscape architects, and wayfinding and signage consultants. The tasks included: verify and update the existing business case and functional program; assist EOK with the assessment of potential sites; develop the PSOS documentation including development of indicative designs for all three sites; develop and submit Site Plan Agreement applications to each of the three municipalities; assist EOK during the RFP period; and documentation of compliance for three proponents as well as leading the assessments of their proposals. Following Financial Close and award of the construction contract, Parkin monitored construction progress for compliance with the contract documents to ensure that the new facilities would comply with EOK’s needs. In addition, following the conclusion of the construction contract, Parkin was retained by ErinoakKids to supervise the work of a construction management firm.
Parkin developed PSOS documentation that required proponents to evaluate all aspects of the design to maximize opportunities for children to engage with their surroundings, to be safe in the environment, to explore their potential for development and to make connections with therapy staff. The PSOS was developed to assist the P3 proponents to understand the EOK ethos and vision and create cost effective building solutions to meet EOK’s needs now, and in the future. As PDC, Parkin challenged the proponents to economically include design solutions specific to this special population of children and youth. Examples include: we required the designers to create feature stairs with an extra wide landing―for children with autism to use as opportunity to decompress when climbing stairs―and numbers on the risers to measure progress, ”truth” windows to introduce children to the inner workings of the buildings; mirrors in washrooms with embedded televisions so video reinforcement of proper bathroom behaviour could be employed to reinforce the work of therapists; ceiling treatments in the pool area to encourage children with neck flexion issues to look up; and many other elements that turn the buildings into therapeutic tools for therapists and clinical staff.
To see photos of these great facilities, please visit our website or click on the following photos:
