News

Moving furniture might not be everybody’s idea of a good time, but when brand new dental chairs and cabinets take their places in a freshly renovated clinic space, well, it’s pretty exciting.  

And that’s exactly what happened during the first two weeks of February when 66 spanking new dental chairs and 109 cabinets were moved into the newly renovated dental clinic.

It was the final stage of a long and logistically challenging journey. The chairs and cabinets had been delivered from A-Dec, the dental equipment supplier in Oregon, to the warehouse of Premiere Van Lines in Dartmouth one week ahead of the final delivery to the clinic.  

“The shipment crossed the US-Canada border as a convoy of big tractor trailers in mid-January,” explains Tammy Chouinard, manager of building services.  “We had to do this well in advance to allow for any delays that might occur at the border or as the result of bad weather. Because the tractor trailers are too big for our loading bay, the equipment had to be unloaded at the Dartmouth warehouse and reloaded onto smaller box trucks, which needed to arrive on site in the correct order.”
 
The box trucks began to roll up to the Dentistry Building loading bay on the evening of January 31.  The delivery had to take place after hours to avoid compromising infection control protocols that are already in place. “The new equipment was uncrated in the loading bay,” says Chouinard, “To move it into the new clinic, the most direct route was down the restricted clinic hallway and past the two new dispensaries, which have infection control measures in place. This meant that each night we had deliveries, the two dispensaries had to be completely sealed to protect them from dust and other debris. Not only that, the new floor had to be covered to protect it while the new equipment was moved into place.”

It sounds involved – and it was – but everything went according to plan. The delivery was completed a day ahead of schedule and the installation crew was also able to finish its work a few days early. Over the next few weeks, the sinks and electrical outlets will be connected and the new equipment is on track to be commissioned later this month.

In November, everyone gets to do it all again when the next delivery rolls in.