MillerKnoll

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Area of Practice: Design & Engagement | Foresight & Strategy

Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre serves a diverse and evolving population across Northwestern Ontario, including Indigenous peoples, newcomers, aging populations, and communities facing complex health and social challenges.

As expectations for culturally informed care, reconciliation, accessibility, and patient experience continued to grow, leaders began asking a deeper question:

Did the physical environment reflect the organization's commitment to the communities it serves?

The challenge extended beyond facilities and infrastructure. It was about understanding how hospital spaces influence trust, belonging, wellbeing, and access to care, and how those spaces could better support the needs of current and future communities.

We partnered with Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre to explore the relationship between physical space, care experiences, and community wellbeing.

Using a participatory and future-focused approach, we conducted a comprehensive Physical Environment Audit that integrated:

• Strategic foresight and STEEPVL analysis
• Community and staff engagement
• Causal Layered Analysis and Three Horizons workshops
• Structured spatial assessments and walkthroughs
• Benchmarking against leading health-care environments
• Scenario-based exploration of future community needs

This process brought together diverse perspectives and examined how the hospital's built environment could better support cultural safety, inclusion, accessibility, psychological safety, and community-centred healing.

The project reframed the role of physical space from a collection of facilities to a strategic asset for health, inclusion, and community trust.

Outcomes included:

• A Hospital Design Prioritization Framework to support long-term decision-making
• Clear short-, medium-, and long-term priorities aligned with organizational values
• Stronger integration of cultural safety, accessibility, and patient experience considerations into planning processes
• Greater understanding of how physical environments influence trust, belonging, and health outcomes
• A decision-making approach that balanced feasibility, desirability, viability, and fairness
• A stronger foundation for future capital planning that responds to evolving community needs

The work also strengthened the organization's capacity to consider Indigenous, multicultural, and community perspectives as part of ongoing planning and design decisions.

Area of Practice: Foresight & Strategy | Systems & Change

As the professional regulator for Ontario's planners, OPPI was operating within a rapidly evolving environment shaped by changing social expectations, reconciliation efforts, environmental pressures, and increasing demands for meaningful engagement with rights-holders and diverse communities.

The organization recognized that responding effectively would require more than a strategic plan. It needed a stronger system for anticipating change, aligning decision-making, and supporting the planning profession's evolving role in serving communities across Ontario.

We partnered with OPPI's leadership to explore emerging social, environmental, and governance trends through foresight, scenario planning, and systems mapping.

Together, we examined how changing conditions could influence the profession, the organization, and the communities planners serve. Through a collaborative process, we identified future risks, opportunities, decision points, and signals for change, strengthening the connection between governance, strategy, and organizational priorities.

Rather than planning for a single future, the work established a framework for continuous learning, adaptation, and responsive decision-making.

The work strengthened OPPI's ability to lead through uncertainty while remaining responsive to the needs of an evolving profession and society.

Outcomes included:

• A clearer long-term strategic direction
• Stronger alignment between governance, strategy, and organizational priorities
• Defined signals and decision triggers to guide future action
• Increased confidence in planning and decision-making under uncertainty
• Greater organizational capacity to anticipate and respond to emerging community needs
• Enhanced ability to support planners in engaging rights-holders and diverse communities in meaningful and respectful ways
• Stronger integration of equity, reconciliation, and public interest considerations into long-term planning and governance processes