The Nats’oojeh Hospital and Health Centre, formerly known as the Stuart Lake Hospital Replacement, is a new regional healthcare facility located in Fort St. James, British Columbia. The facility opened to its first patients on 14 January 2025 and is approximately three times the size of the hospital it replaces, bringing emergency, acute, long-term, primary, laboratory and diagnostic imaging services together under one roof.
To support the maintenance of the building services that keep this 24/7 facility running, Dewick & Associates was engaged to author the Mechanical Operation and Maintenance (O&M) Manuals for the project’s mechanical services contractor.
Our focus was on producing a clear, compliant and practical documentation suite covering the heating, ventilation, air conditioning, plumbing and medical gas systems serving the hospital, giving the facility’s maintenance team a reliable reference for the life of the building.
By Alexandra Vuksa
Credit: Northern Health – Nats'oojeh Hospital and Health Centre, Fort St. James, BC
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Pitt Meadows Plumbing & Mechanical Systems Ltd. is a Metro Vancouver based mechanical contractor with more than four decades of experience delivering large-scale projects across British Columbia. The firm specialises in industrialised construction, offsite multi-trade prefabrication and BIM-led coordination, and has built a strong reputation in the healthcare sector through landmark projects such as the Penticton Regional Hospital Patient Care Tower, the Royal Inland Hospital Patient Care Tower in Kamloops and the Cariboo Memorial Hospital Redevelopment.
For the Stuart Lake Hospital project, Pitt Meadows Plumbing was responsible for the full mechanical installation, including HVAC, plumbing and medical gas systems, and required a documentation partner who could turn that installation into a clear, compliant and practical manual for the long-term operation of the facility under Northern Health.
Authoring mechanical services documentation for a remote regional hospital requires a specialized approach that exceeds standard commercial requirements. At Stuart Lake Hospital, the infrastructure must support a 24/7 clinical environment with rigorous standards for infection control, air quality, and thermal comfort. The diverse asset base includes:
The hospital serves Fort St. James and the surrounding First Nations communities, where alternative facilities are some distance away, the documentation needed to be straightforward for the local maintenance team to work with day to day. Aligning manufacturer literature, commissioning data and as-installed conditions across the full mechanical scope, and presenting it in a format suited to the project’s progressive design-build handover, was central to the brief.
Dewick & Associates assigned a dedicated technical authoring team and Client Coordinator to liaise directly with Pitt Meadows Plumbing’s project team and the wider design-build delivery led by Graham Construction.
We authored a site-specific Mechanical O&M Manual structured around the systems the facility team would use, including air handling, hydronics, exhaust, plumbing and medical gas. Each section was supported by detailed equipment schedules, clear operating instructions, preventative maintenance schedules and indexed warranty information, with logical cross-references back to the mechanical drawings. By focusing on a logical, indexed structure, Dewick & Associates ensured that critical fault-finding procedures and warranty information were easily retrievable, reducing the time required for future onsite troubleshooting.
The project resulted in a professional, fully compliant suite of mechanical O&M documentation that facilitated a seamless transition from construction handover to live healthcare operations upon the facility’s opening in January 2025. By providing a rigorous technical framework from day one, Dewick & Associates ensured that the hospital’s complex building services were operationally ready to meet stringent clinical standards.
The Northern Health maintenance team is now equipped with a “single source of truth” for their mechanical assets. This centralised technical record enables the facility management team to:
Most importantly, this high-standard documentation ensures that the patients, residents, and staff at Nats’oojeh Hospital enjoy a safe, consistent, and climate-controlled environment. By securing the technical integrity of the building services, we have helped provide long-term stability for the community this facility serves.
The content in this case study has been informed by project documentation and client communication provided to Dewick & Associates during and following the completion of the project. Where external sources have contributed to our understanding of relevant standards or industry practice, these are listed below.
Northern Health – Nats’oojeh Hospital and Health Centre, Fort St. James, BC
Note: Some content in this case study draws on a combination of sources rather than direct quotation. Where this is the case, contributing sources are acknowledged above rather than cited inline.
Technical authoring of O&M Manuals enabling efficient plant operation and effective maintenance for equipment longevity, including:
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