Darrell Greer
Northern News Services

RANKIN INLET (May 26/99) - Construction beginning this fall on Arviat's new $10 million health centre was one of two good news announcements concerning P3 projects at the Keewatin Regional Health Board's (KRHB) meeting this past week in Rankin Inlet.

The official announcement came out of Iqaluit on May 19, following the signing of an agreement between the government of Nunavut and the Arviat Development Corp. A tentative completion date has been set for April 20, 2000.

The agreement represents the first Public/Private Partnership project in Nunavut and will see Arviat Development design, construct and manage the centre. Design work is expected to be complete by the end of the month.

Rosemary Brown, director of planning for the KRHB, and Robert Savlouskis of the telecommunications and technical services branch of Public Works have worked on P3 projects in Arviat and Rankin for the past year.

Brown said the projects are unique in that the government partners with a private sector business to build infrastructure. The private interest designs, constructs and maintains a project, while the government enters into a long-term operating lease with that business.

"The new building in Arviat will provide the opportunity for the unification of health and social services delivery in the community," said Brown. "This is the first privately funded health care facility with the government leasing back and then running the health services program at the community level.

"It's taken a lot of work by GNWT and Nunavut officials, the community and the people who responded to the request for proposal, so it's been a real team building experience."

It was also announced at the KRHB meeting that preliminary design plans for the Keewatin Regional Health Centre in Rankin Inlet, also a P3 project, are complete and the project is ready to enter its next stage. Occupancy for the regional health centre is tentatively set for April, 2001.

Savlouskis said the regional P3 project is being approached differently than the one in Arviat.

"There was a framework agreement signed for the Rankin centre between the GNWT and each one of the three Birthright Corporations, which was taken over by the Nunavut government," said Savlouskis. "The actual developer has already been chosen for Rankin, while Arviat's went out for proposal."

The Sakku Development Corp. is the private sector partner for the Rankin facility and a lease agreement will now have to be negotiated between Sakku and the Nunavut government before the design is completed.

Savlouskis said normally, when starting to construct a building, drawings are done to provide information to build. A decision was made by the P3 management committee to take a different approach with the regional facility.

"We've finished the preliminary design stage and now we sit down to negotiate with Sakku. They have to bring an architect on line and work out what they believe can, in terms of an estimate, be put into an actual number.

"It's a design process, basically, done backwards. You have a fuzzy little drawing representing the preliminary stage of the idea and you're trying to get somebody to give you a full, 20-year lease price."