Medico Construction & Design

09/09/2026

Nobody hands you a room count when you tour a space. They hand you a square footage number.

Those are not the same thing, and the gap between them is where clinic plans go wrong.

Axis Primary Care in Surrey is 3,750 square feet. Swipe for what fits inside it, and for the one thing in the room that decided the whole layout.

If you are reading a lease right now, the number worth asking about is rooms, not feet.

Talk to us before you sign.

09/07/2026

A clinic gets one name on the door. It takes a lot more than that to open one.

Framers, electricians, plumbers, drywallers, millworkers, painters. Site supervisors who catch the thing nobody else saw. And the practitioners who decided their community needed the space in the first place.

To all of them, and to everyone this day is actually for, thank you.

Happy Labour Day.

09/04/2026

Fourteen exam rooms, eight offices, a boardroom and a full waiting area, all inside 3,750 square feet.

The brief for Axis Primary Care was a modern, welcoming environment that did not trade away clinical capacity to achieve it. Those two things pull against each other, and the resolution is almost entirely in the layout.

Exam rooms are where a clinic generates revenue, so room count per square foot is really a question about whether the lease works financially. Two spaces of identical size can hold very different numbers of rooms depending on where the structure and services already sit, and on how much storage can be absorbed into millwork rather than into floor area.

That gets resolved on paper, well before anyone frames a wall.

Axis Primary Care, Surrey BC. Built by Medico Construction and Design.

09/01/2026

Ten exams rooms, a pharmacy and a doctors office, all in a space most people would call small. This is Apra, a clinic and pharmacy we have under construction right now. Its a mall unit so the footprint is tight, but every part of it is doing a job.

We’re at rough in stage. Framing is nearly done and the plumbing and electrical are about ninety percent complete. Finishes come next.

If you’re looking at a space and worried it’s too tight for what you need, it might not be. A lot of that comes down to layout.

09/01/2026

08/27/2026

Waiting for a permit isn’t what delays a build. Being unready when it arrives is.
That’s the part nobody explains about the weeks after you sign. It looks like nothing is happening, you’ve signed, the drawings are approved, the application is in, and you’re back to seeing patients while a project you’re paying for goes quiet.
Here’s what’s actually going on in that window.
We file early and we file complete, because a permit’s clock really starts when the application is right, not when it’s handed in. Then, while it sits with the city, everything gets chosen. Millwork, flooring, lighting, paint, fixtures and where every outlet goes. Not where they’re easiest to install. Where you’ll actually reach for them.
An outlet in the wrong place is a five-minute fix before drywall. After drywall it’s a pipe running down your wall for the next ten years.
Most projects lose their time in the weeks after approval, when everyone finally starts picking finishes and finds out the millwork has a lead time nobody accounted for. By the time ours comes through, there’s nothing left to decide. Day one is construction.
Part 2 of the series. Part 1 is on the profile.

08/25/2026

Everyone asks what a pharmacy costs to build. The honest answers is it depends. Here’s what it depends on. Two things move the number more than anything else: Your cabinetry and your electrical.
Custom millwork in the dispensary alone can swing $20k to $40k. Electrical has a range just as wide. Neither choice is wrong. Sara, our project manager at Medico thinks there’s no correct answer, only whether the answer fits your business and your budget. And materials have come far enough that the most expensive option isn’t the only route to a space that feels premium.
What we work to avoid is the version where an owner falls in love with a spec in month one and sees the number in month two and the whole project stalls. That’s why we have the budget conversation in the first meeting, not the third.

08/21/2026

If your clinic’s design work gets invoiced after October 1, you’ll be paying a tax you can’t claim back.

BC is adding PST to architectural, engineering and geoscience services from October 1, 2026. It’s 7%, applied to 30% of the fee, and unlike GST, businesses can’t recover it. Once it’s charged, it’s gone.

On a $20,000 design fee that’s $420. On $50,000, it’s $1,050.

Not enormous on its own. But it’s avoidable, and most people planning a build right now don’t know it’s coming.

One thing worth being precise about: invoicing before October 1 only keeps you clear if the design work also wraps up before December 1. If it runs past that, the portion done after October 1 gets taxed anyway.

We’re not tax advisors, confirm the specifics with your accountant. But we do know construction timelines, and we didn’t want you finding this out in September.

If a build is anywhere on your horizon, even one you haven’t committed to yet, it’s worth a conversation this month.

08/19/2026

Most doctors have never watched a clinic get built. Billy does it every day.

He’s our site supervisor. His job is the back and forth — two active sites, the plumber’s questions, the thing on the blueprint that has to match the thing on the wall.

His own summary: solving problems all day long.

Then he said something worth repeating. Most medical professionals don’t really understand everything that goes into building an office — and talking about it isn’t the same as showing it.

He’s right. So here’s a day of it.

If you’re planning a build, this is what someone should be doing for you daily. Ask us what that looks like on a real project.

07/11/2026

Before you sign a lease or hire a contractor ask these 4 questions first.

Most costly mistakes in clinic construction happen before the build even starts: the wrong layout, permits nobody owns, equipment nobody planned for.

We help healthcare practitioners across Western Canada get this right from day one — planning, design, and construction under one roof.

Right now, qualifying design-build projects can get their design fee credited back.

📞 Book your free consultation today
Call: (604) 644-4120
📧 [email protected]