June 27, 2025
IN THE FACE OF ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY and yo-yoing tariff threats from the United States, BC Building Trades members are supporting Canadian infrastructure and ideals through work on several pivotal hospital projects across British Columbia.
Aaron Preik, superintendent at the Royal Columbian Hospital project in New Westminster and a member of Insulators 118, said he finds working on health care infrastructure uniquely rewarding.
“The first hospital I ever worked on was Surrey Memorial,” said Preik. “Six years later [in 2019], I’m having my daughter there and I just know that I’ve contributed to building the project that I’m now using. It’s interesting to work on something knowing that life-changing stuff will happen there eventually.”
The province has more than 20 new hospital or existing hospital upgrade projects that are presently or soon to be underway. This figure does not include the nearly dozen long-term care and other types of health facilities also in the works.
Preik has been in the field for 11 years and although he has worked on other large projects in the past, he says that the scope and scale of the work at Royal Columbian is unlike anything he has been in charge of before.
“Hospitals like this are a different type of construction project, there’s a lot more involved than just domestic water and air,” he said.
The safety standards for a hospital are more stringent than residential projects and there are certain considerations that are unique to hospitals, for example outfitting rooms with steam sterilization equipment.
“You don’t see [steam] on a lot of projects anymore… but that’s based on different types of pressures so we [need to think about] how we insulate the different equipment,” Preik added.
While the demands and expertise required of workers on these sites can be quite high, Preik said that “work like this is really important [to protect health care and the economy]… especially with how much Metro Vancouver is expanding.”
Preik graduated as one of Insulators 118 business manager Rob Sheck’s students from the Insulator Heat and Frost Red Seal Apprenticeship Program through SkilledTradesBC in 2020.
Despite looming economic uncertainty, Sheck said that, thanks to the many ongoing hospital projects, he’s feeling optimistic. “It’s pretty busy, almost unprecedented. I’m not sure if we’ve ever had so many hospital projects on the go at the same time. It’s pretty good times for the insulator right now.”
Sheck said that four large hospital projects in particular — the Burnaby General Hospital upgrade, Royal Columbia Hospital, the New St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver and the Cowichan Hospital on Vancouver Island — have employed about 100 Insulator 118 members, many off and on for years at a time.
He estimates that between the various hospital projects and the ongoing LNG project in Kitimat, their usual 500 to 600 member local is currently in a boom with 1,700 members working under the jurisdictional area.
Though there is some uncertainty regarding how much tariffs will impact projects down the line, with 20 years of experience in the field, Sheck says that he knows better than to let the news get him down.
“I try to look at the long run,” Sheck said. “I’m old enough to see that we’ve survived a lot of ups and downs in the construction industry. We managed to weather the 2008 financial crisis because we had the Olympics and a lot of good infrastructure projects.”
Studies have shown that large-scale infrastructure projects can encourage stability during periods of economic hardship by creating jobs, stimulating industry and boosting overall economic activity.
But Sheck said these types of projects are a welcomed boost for the industry even outside of turbulent economic times.
“We have attrition throughout the construction trades as a whole. A lot of people are reaching retirement age and we need to replace that skill and that leadership gap with people leaving the workforce,” he said. “These bigger infrastructure projects create a really good learning environment for apprentices.”
Sheet Metal 280 member and fourth-generation sheet metal worker, Nick Rowley, said that over the last few years it’s been all hands on deck, especially on these bigger projects.
Rowley is currently working as a sheet metal supervisor at the New St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver. The unique demands of a major hospital project ranging from the size and scope to the stringent cleanliness standards for constructing negative pressure rooms means that a lot of workers are putting in extra hours and relying on each other’s experience to get the job done.
“We have to trust each other,” said Rowley. “We’ve got 130 sheet metal workers on site for the company that I work for. It’s all about spreading that knowledge amongst each other and having each other’s back to help reach that finish line.”
Once completed, he says the New St. Paul’s Hospital will do a lot of good for the surrounding community.
“These hospitals are very much needed,” he said. “There’s no room, there’s no beds anywhere. This is definitely a project that the province has needed for a long time.”
Available hospital beds have been in decline for decades. Expanding much needed hospital space along with beefing up B.C.’s health-care workforce, are two ways some experts say the province can take aim at long wait-times and practices like “hallway medicine” where patients are crammed into hospital corridors.
The New St. Paul’s hospital will have 548 inpatient beds, increasing the total number of beds from the current hospital by 25 per cent.
Rowley adds that he’s been happy to see members from more diverse backgrounds joining the trades in recent years. “I’ve been in the industry for 16 years and if you’re looking at a new project like with St. Paul’s hospital, you’ll see a lot more diverse groups in the trades,” he said. “And that’s exactly what we need to achieve something like this.”
Data from February 2021 to February 2024, shows that the New St. Paul’s Hospital project is exceeding targets for both employment and local procurement, with 43 per cent of new hires identifying as being from an equity-seeking group.
“The Building Trades need the manpower and it’s not just sheet metal,” Rowley added. “It’s every single company on site. The demand of this magnitude for a project this size just can’t be met with what we have right now.”
Rowley said that he is proud to be a part of projects like this that contribute to both Canada’s public health-care system and the economy.
“The hours can be long, but we’re all trying our best to make this project happen for the province, the country and for generations to come.”
By Maddi Dellplain