The 10-bed ward was meant to open three years ago.
However, modern intensive care units need the air to be able to be exchanged at least 14 times an hour, a requirement beyond the capabilities of the existing ventilation system in the clinical services building — a facility which a 2012 report estimated had a remaining working life of five years.
The ICU development was meant to be a $14.8 million project but it will have undoubtedly cost more by now: in March the Southern District Health Board (now Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand — Southern) went into committee to approve further expenditure — estimated to be $2.5 million — to try to remedy the ventilation system issues.
Also in March, the SDHB confirmed that it would be seeking compensation from the contract holder for the design of the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system.
ICU service manager Shayne Wylie said the remedial work was going according to plan.
"We are planning for completion in August next year ... we are slightly ahead at the moment but some of the more complex work is in the next stage."
Mr Wylie said that work had to be managed around keeping the ICU running smoothly, and that contractors were doing an amazing job to co-ordinate their requirements with what needed to be done to keep the building running.
Building firm Naylor Love is endeavouring to make the air-conditioning system operate as needed.
Its plan is to fix the issues with stage 2: once that is done, the ICU will shift into stage 2 to allow further fixes to be done in the already open stage 1.
The ventilation system was built in 1981, and at some stage in the past was detuned by a previous board as a cost-cutting measure.
It is understood that some or all of the original plans were lost, a factor which hampered both the original ventilation consultant who worked on the project and subsequent engineers brought in by the SDHB to try to rectify the issue.
Although the ICU expansion has not formally been opened, the facility has already been pressed into emergency use due to the extreme demands placed on Dunedin Hospital at the height of the Covid-19 Omicron wave.
The SDHB has resource consent to use the ward in a crisis situation, and Mr Wylie said that when the ICU became swamped with Covid positive patients, those who did not have the pandemic disease were shifted to available spaces in stage 2.
Those who were either ill with Covid were cared for in stage 1, which had a ventilation system efficient enough to keep other patients and staff safe.
"We had to do that for two months, probably less than that," Mr Wylie said.
"Once Covid dropped away we moved back down to the end that we have consent to be in; the other end still does not meet building code requirements."
Stage 1 has functioning isolation rooms and any Covid-positive patients who arrived now were able to be cared for there, Mr Wylie said.
