The new Pictou County Wellness Centre houses an aquatic centre, two arenas with NHL-sized ice surfaces, a 450-square-metre fitness centre, administration offices, multi-purpose community and conference spaces, as well as the relocated Pictou County YMCA.

Bird self-performed all concrete work associated with the six lane 25 metre pool, the indoor ‘lazy river’ and the therapeutic whirlpool. The complexity of the curved pools required a computer numerical control (CNC) machine to create templates for the concrete formwork. Once created, the hundreds of curvilinear templates were painstakingly assembled into the pool’s formwork allowing the concrete to be placed.

The seating capacity in the new centre is 1,850 and includes three VIP booths. Through value engineering, Bird replaced the originally specified pre-cast bleachers with cast-in-place bleachers, in which Bird was able to self-perform the concrete work. This change to the scope of work provided a cost savings to the client, while the team was still able to meet the aggressive schedule of the centre’s grand opening.