CCHF is thrilled to host an upcoming conference at the renowned Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning, part of SickKids—a world-leading facility in pediatric research, care, and education. Located in the heart of Toronto, SickKids stands at the forefront of advancing care for children and youth.  The Hospital was recently acclaimed by Newsweek as being the best hospital across the globe for specialized pediatrics.

CONFERENCE DAY 1 (November 27, 2025)

The first day of the conference focuses on children and progress in designing health spaces that are genuinely reflective of children’s and youth’s needs, including safe, supportive environments for families and caregivers, and inspiration for clinical teams and researchers to collaborate and share more effectively across the continuum of care in a variety of health settings.  The Deputy Minister of Health in Ontario is our special guest, along with opening remarks from the President and CEO of SickKids, Ronald Cohn.

CONFERENCE DAY 2 (November 28, 2025)

The second day features discussions on navigating capital costs and managing the policy direction of austerity. Discussions identify solutions for increasing efficiencies amid rising redevelopment costs of healthcare facilities, such as optimization, design convergence and commercialization opportunities for health builds.  Panellists and presenters will discuss the costs and payback. Additionally, we will explore opportunities to foster community integration beyond traditional health facilities through collaborative community projects, recognizing the impact of facilities on the community as a major employer and public space that fosters care in unique, built environments.

PRE CONFERENCE EVENTS (November 26, 2025)

The Canadian College of Health Leaders’ (CCHL) customized leadership training for Capital Health Leaders
(3 hours 9 am-12 pm)

Healthcare leaders face unique challenges at the crossroads of infrastructure, patient care and health system transformation. The Canadian College of Health Leaders has created a customised leadership training program to equip executives, planners and project directors with the skills to lead through complex capital projects and be able to successfully communicate across the system to build trust and shared understanding of issues and objectives.  In this session, Faculty from the Canadian College of Health leaders and TEDx speaker Dr. Jaason Geerts will deliver an interactive session for both seasoned and up-and-coming leaders. Don’t miss this opportunity!

Standardization in Health Capital: Ontario’s Direction and UK Lessons
(2.5 hours 1-3:30 pm)

Ontario Ministry of Health issued an rfp for standardized designs for a health facilities.  Learn more about the health capital program and what this means for scope, cost, and delivery from the leaders that will be managing the project. Also, learn from leaders involved in the UK’s New Hospital Program on how standardized design is being applied across multiple hospitals – what’s working, what’s evolving and what to avoid.

A facilitated roundtable of expert across disciplines – owners, operators, architects, engineers and constructors health leaders, modular construction will discuss implications and provide practical next steps in the Canadian context.

Facility Tour Offerings

4:00 – 5:30 PM, November 26: Stella’s Place
Following the November 26th Symposium

Stella’s Place – an award-winning outpatient mental health facility designed specifically for young adults. The tour will include a presentation and walk-through of the innovative spaces.

Please note: Attendance is limited to 60 people.

Learn more about Stella’s Place and its awards
Stella’s Place

6:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Anishnawbe Health Centre in the Portlands

5:00 – 6:00 PM, November 27: Guided Tours of the Simulation Labs at The Hospital for Sick Children 

The Simulation Program has many versatile spaces to meet the objectives of various learners. The new 11,500 sq. ft. Simulation Centre is in the Patient Support Centre, 175 Elizabeth Street.  

The new Simulation Centre has four simulation suites, four debriefing rooms, six OSCE style suites, two large multipurpose rooms for procedural training and large group sessions, Immersive suite equipped with projection technology and capable of VR training, the SimKids Invention lab housed with 3D printers and a student lounge 

The Simulation Program is mobile and the team delivers in-situ simulations in many units, as well as, travelling to hospitals throughout the community to facilitate training and quality improvement work. 

3:00 PM, November 28 (TBC): The Hospital for Sick Children’s, Peter Gilgan Centre One of the largest children’s health research centres in the world. Featuring office and work space optimization design, interiors colocation for bedside /  benchside care.

CCHF

Connect – Share – Innovate

Conference Location:
Peter Gilgan Patient Care Tower – SickKids | The Hospital for Sick Children
686 Bay Street, Toronto, Ontario

*Public parking is available off of Elizabeth Street

Draft Agenda: CCHF is confirming slots / speakers. Thank you for your patience…stay tuned. 

Day 1 – November 27, 2025

8:00 AM | Networking Breakfast

Network with your peers, enjoy a hot breakfast and walk around the table tops in the foyer

9:00 AM | Introduction and Welcome from Ronald Cohn, President & CEO of SickKids Hospital

Welcome from the Co-Chairs, Mike Hickey, CCHF Board Member & Rita Mezei CCHF Co-Founder and Executive Director

9:15 AM | Project Horizon’s Evolution 

The Hospital for Sick Children is transforming infrastructure to support the next generation of pediatric care. Learn about the construction phasing and renovations planned, construction methods and innovations in integrating digital health and personalized medicine technologies for world class care.

Gloria Kain, Vice President Planning, Development and Transformation, The Hospital for Sick Children
Gavin Nicholl, Chief Planning and Development Officer, The Hospital for Sick Children

10:00 AM  Women’s and Children’s Shah Family Hospital – Trillium Health (Description to be confirmed)

11:00 AM | BREAK

11:20 AM |  Designing the Future of Pediatric Care: Global Lessons from Canada and the UK’s New Hospital Program (NHP)

What does it take to create truly future-ready pediatric hospitals? This session explores two ambitious healthcare initiatives – a Canadian provinces-led international review of pediatric facility standards and the UK’s New Hospital Program (NHP), the largest hospital-building initiative in a generation.

In Canada, a comprehensive review of international pediatric guidance and benchmarking of world-leading hospitals revealed critical gaps in provincial standards. By analysing global best practice and engaging with clinicians, operators, and designers, the team identified key strategies to improve consistency, adaptability, and family-centred care. These findings are shaping recommendations to future proof pediatric hospitals across Canada – and potentially beyond.

Meanwhile, the NHP showcases how sustained collaboration accelerates innovation. Through co-design frameworks and global stakeholder engagement, families, clinicians, and architects have worked together to reimagine care environments. A Neonatal Care case study illustrates how this approach improves outcomes, patient experience, and operational efficiency.

Delegates will gain actionable insights on embedding user engagement, translating international best practice to local contexts, and designing adaptable, compassionate, and evidence-based pediatric facilities. At its heart, this session is a call to collaborate, innovate, and design with children and families at the centre.

Rahul Chodhari MD, Associate Director of Medical Innovation & Improvement at National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust New Hospital Program (UK) and Consultant Paediatrician (virtually)

Meischa Wade, Senior Principal Healthcare Planner, Mott MacDonald, UK

Sarah Wallwork, Healthcare Planning Lead, Mott MacDonald, UK

12:00 PM | LUNCH

1:00 PM | AFTERNOON KEYNOTE: The Honourable, Deborah Richardson, Ontario’s Deputy Minister of Health

Audience Q and A

1:45 PM | Breaking the Silo: How One Room Sparked System-Level Change

Discover how a unique partnership between Lakeridge Health and Grandview Kids turned a gap in pediatric care into a model for collaboration, innovation and patient-centered design. What began as a single procedure room became a catalyst for rethinking how healthcare organizations can work together across silos, systems and scopes of practice to better serve families.

This conversation will highlight the power of relationships, the importance of engaging partners early, and the real-world impact of doing healthcare differently.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify strategies for cross-organizational collaboration that prioritize patient needs and fill care gaps in innovative ways.
2. Describe how capital projects can be leveraged as opportunities to rethink service delivery and overcome traditional silos.
3. Recognize the value of early engagement, including with patients, families and clinical teams, in co-designing care environments.
4. Understand the role of leadership, trust and personal relationships in enabling systems-level change, especially in smaller or resource-limited organizations.

Tab Carroll, Health System Executive, Clinical, Lakeridge Health
Jamie Cook, Principal, Colliers Project Leaders
Tom McHugh, Chief Executive Officer, Grandview Kids

2:30 PM | BREAK

2:50 PM | Building Safer Futures: Designing for Successful Transitions in Paediatric Care

Transitions in care, whether from the NICU to home, between pediatric and adult services, or across hospital units, are moments of both opportunity and vulnerability. For children with medical complexity, the way these transitions are supported can mean the difference between safety and harm, stability and crisis, resilience, and long-term health risks.

This session will highlight why transitions matter, the system-level risks that emerge when they are poorly supported, and how intentional facility design, care models, and interprofessional collaboration can transform outcomes for children and families.

We invite participants to reimagine healthcare planning and facility design not just as technical or architectural exercises, but as opportunities to engineer safety, continuity, and compassion into every transition children and families experience.

Natasha Bruno, PhD Student at the University of Toronto and Clinical Research Project Manager, The Hospital for Sick Children
Angie Lim, Clinical Nurse Specialist – Interprofessional Practice (CNS-IP) Research Associate; Post-Doctorate Fellow, Child Health Evaluative Sciences, The Hospital for Sick Children

3:30 PM | Panel: Mental health design across the continuum of care 

A panel discussion that focuses in on mental healthcare that is part of whole person healing that ‘designs in’ the patient experience and brings forward renewed partnerships inside care settings and in the community for improved outcomes for patients, staff and caregivers.
Shary Adams, Healthcare Practice Area Leader, Gensler
Nzinga Walker, Executive Director,  Stella’s Place, Toronto
Robyn Whitwham, Associate, Stantec

4:15 PM |  

15 min. Little cities of health, not machines for healing – an urban approach to the design of children’s hospitals

Thinking of hospitals in urban terms not only transforms the way they are experienced once complete but also makes the process of designing them more accessible and engaging for non-experts. The idea of the hospital as a little city is an inclusive vision recognising the full range of its social scope, not just as a place of healing but also work, learning, respite, play and interaction. A single institution embracing many smaller domains, all with their own front door and sense of identity.

Benedict Zucchi, Principal and Head of Architecture, BDP, UK

15 min. Transforming Care in Highly Specialized Environments for the most Fragile Patients

Elizabeth van den Brink, Principal, ZGF

5:00 Conference Close

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM | Networking Reception ⭐ @ SickKids 

5:00 – 6:00 PM | Simulation Lab Tours (groups of 15)

Day 2 – November 28, 2025

8:00 AM | Networking Breakfast

Network with your peers, enjoy a hot breakfast and walk around the table tops in the foyer

8:50 AM | Welcome from the Co-Chairs, Michael Keen, CCHF Board Member & Victoria Head, President and CEO, Archus 

9:00 AM | Presentation followed by a Panel Discussion
Escalation of Construction costs for healthcare facilities is unhealthy and doesn’t add up

Susan Neil, President, Hanscomb

9:20 AM | Panel: Given the current situation for cost escalations that are no longer feasible for health capital budgets, what are strategies owners, constructors, architects and consultants can employ to reduce project costs?

Moderator: Cliff Harvey, Vice President, Redevelopment, Waterloo Regional Health Network (WRHN)

Tim Eastman, Senior Principal, Stantec

Wayne Ferguson, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of Infrastructure Services, EllisDon

David Ho, National Leader, Healthcare & Buildings, Accenture Infrastructure and Capital Projects

Michael Keen, Vice-President Facilities Planning and Chief Planning Officer, Unity Health Toronto

Susan Neil, President, Hanscomb

10:10 AM | 20 MIN BREAK

10:30 AM | Beyond the Four Walls of Healthcare Delivery – Using Covenant Health’s New Community Based Outpatient Care Facility to Improve Service Delivery and Act as a Catalyst for Revenue Generation and Neighbourhood Renewal in Southeast Edmonton

The innovative partnership between Covenant Health and Rohit Infrastructure utilized the decanting and relocation of 100,000 sf of outpatient clinical program into a new Community Health Centre to increase system capacity and catalyze the redevelopment of an 11-acre site into a $410 million-dollar mixed-use campus of care.

Key Learnings:

1. The nature and structure of the contractual relationship between a health care provider and developer that allows for the flexibility to collectively develop a building program and master plan that is initially not fully defined.
2. What clinical programs are included in the CHC and how high-quality outpatient care capacity can be developed cost effectively and improve the efficiency of the overall system.
3. The importance of having a development partner who understands project financing, servicing, zoning, leasing, asset design/operations and how best to integrate mixed functions on a single campus.
4. Understanding of the potential that healthcare infrastructure projects have in improving and accelerating community building and renewal.

11:05 AM | Community Well-Being Design & A Dialogue with the audience (Description pending)

Diego Morettin, Architect, Partner, DIALOG

11:50 PM | LUNCH

12:50 PM | North York’s New Patient Tower and New Procurement Model Adoption of The Alliance – Rationale and Opportunities in the Ontario Marketplace BC

Rudy Dahdal, Vice-President, Planning, Redevelopment and Clinical Support, North York General Hospital

Chris Killer, Infrastructure Ontario, Vice-President, Commercial Management

1:30 PM | Innovations in raining revenues for health capital TBC))

2:10 PM| Three Innovation Areas for Physician Back-of-House Workspace Ecosystems

Building on JLL Design’s proven transformative campus space planning methodologies, this session focuses specifically on Physician Workspace Ecosystems – an approach to creating cost-efficient office environments that provide physicians with the right tools and spaces to complete their non-clinical work effectively.

Susan Chang, Senior Vice-President, Workplace Design Advisory, JLL Design Americas
Ian McDermott, Vice-President, Facilities and Capital Development, Sinai Health

2:35 What Will the Hospital of 2040 Need? 
Scenario Planning for Exponential Increases in Healthcare Data, AI, and Energy Demands

Technology is advancing at a pace that promises efficiency and better care, but only if hospitals have the infrastructure and reliable energy to support it. At the same time, healthcare leaders must navigate limited funding while making the right long-term decisions. We’ll explore what hospitals of 2040 will need to thrive amid exponential growth in healthcare data, AI, and digital technologies.

Drawing on lessons from projects like the Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital and the new Surrey Hospital and BC Cancer Centre, we’ll demonstrate how futureproofing and energy resiliency strategies drive business value—not just solve engineering challenges.

Attendees will learn how to:

• Anticipate and plan for the operational and energy impacts of AI, connected devices, and digital imaging.
• Align and integrate electrical systems, IT infrastructure, and sustainability strategies from the start.
• Apply lessons from real-world examples of hospitals already balancing technology and resiliency.

Hospitals that succeed will treat technology and energy resiliency as strategic investments. Join us to discover practical strategies to protect patient safety, strengthen operations, and build lasting trust.

King Cheung, Technology Lead, Salas O’Brien Duane Waite, Principal, Head of Electrical Engineering, Salas O’Brien

3:05 PM | Conference Close

3:15 PM | Tour at the Peter Gilgan Research and Learning Centre and Patient Support Centre Tower (TBC)

One of the the largest health centre in the world devoted to children’s health research. Within the 21-storey tower, more than 2,000 scientists and staff — previously scattered in six different locations — are conducting state-of-the-art research in genomics, cancer research, stem cell research, brain behaviour research, and organ research.  The Tour will include workspaces and research areas of collaboration.

*Agenda subject to change. Stay tuned for more details.

The conference program will include interactive sessions, panels, and a reception. Please join your healthcare facility sector network. Where real issues, innovative thought leadership and ideas are discussed for a better future of healthcare facilities supporting better care – together. Join Us!

More information will be available soon! Register by November 1 and get 10% the regular registration price and an additional 10% off for groups of three or more. This offer cannot be combined with other offers.

HOTEL ACCOMMODATIONS

A select number of rooms have been set aside for our out-of-town conference attendees at the Courtyard Marriott Downtown Toronto – 475 Yonge St, Toronto, ON M4Y 1X7. To take advantage of our special room rates, reservations must be made by November 5, 2025.

• Online Booking: Use the dedicated reservation website:  Guests can make, modify, and cancel their hotel reservations through this link.
• Phone Booking: Call 1-888-236-2427 or 1-801-468-4000 (for Marriott Bonvoy members) to reserve by phone.

AUDIENCE

• Healthcare leaders in Facilities & Redevelopment, Corporate Services, CEO, CFO’s
• Clinical Leads (CMIOs, Nursing, Medical leads)
• Capital Planning leaders and Project Directors
• ICAT / IMIT Leaders
• Design / Build Executives
• Constructors / Project Managers
• Consulting / Design Engineers
• Architects
• Planning Consultants
• Infection Control Professionals
• Quality and Patient Safety
• Occupational Health and Safety
• Capital Planners, Infrastructure Planners
• Hospital Service Providers
• Energy Services Companies
• Healthcare Vendors

Note: Speakers and topics may change based on their availability. CCHF makes every effort to only publish confirmed speakers.

CANCELLATION POLICY
Fees are non-refundable. Registrants may be replaced by a colleague of the same organization, if written notification is given prior to the event. Note that CCHF does not guarantee all speakers. There may be substitutions due to availability or the need to make program changes. In the highly unlikely event of a program cancellation, CCHF will credit your company for the same value of the next event in your area.