Paramedic services headquarters on schedule
Location will help better serve region, including rural townships
WATERLOO — Despite almost a month of lost construction time due to rain, timelines for the region’s new north ambulance base and paramedic services headquarters at 1001 Erbs Rd. are being met, with operations expected to be up and running this fall.
According to Deputy Chief Rob Crossan, the new 48,500-square-foot facility is built to accommodate future growth and will hold up to 27 vehicles — 21 ambulances and six SUV or car-response units — in a 25,000-squarefoot bay.
“We’re going to have more than that out of there, because at least half of the vehicles we’re going to have are going to be on the road at any one given time,” he said.
The new digs take the strain off the region’s only fleet centre for paramedic services located on Maple Grove Road in Cambridge.
That building holds 14 vehicles, but the fleet is 32.
“So we’re really kind of busting at the seams here,” Crossan said.
Every paramedic in the region currently starts and finishes their shift at the Maple Grove facility, which can lead to operational inefficiencies.
For example, paramedics working overtime in Kitchener due to offload delays, who need to get back to Cambridge at the end of their shift, often hold up the evening deployment of crews.
“So this is going to make it much more seamless," Crossan said. "We should never run into those kind of issues with this kind of setup.”
Given the location of the new building in the region's northwest end, it is seen as something that will help better serve the population from a geographical standpoint, including the rural townships.
Paramedic services administration will move in, making it the new headquarters.
The new facility comes with a construction budget of $18.2 million and an overall budget of $21.6 million.
That figure includes training components in the form of a meeting and training room, as well as a simulation room that will house training mannequins and can be configured to look like an apartment, workplace or other site to test various scenarios.
The new headquarters will be the first emergency services building in Canada to receive Fitwel certification, meaning it will provide healthier workplace environments and improve occupant health and productivity.
It will be built to a LEED silver standard for ecofriendliness and there will be an automatic truck wash that will use rainwater harvested from the roof to wash ambulances.
There also will be solar panels installed on the flat roof of the garage that will produce 110 kilowatts of electricity to power the building.