• Health IT Cluster
  • Open Concept Office Space for Lease in Summerside
  • 250 Water Street Summerside, PE C1N 1B6

ABOUT SUMMERSIDE

An interview with Dave Perry of Carestream Health about doing business in Summerside with an emphasis on finding and retaining qualified staff for the IT sector.

Office Space Available

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Holman Centre Suite 204b

Located in the historic Holman building, this second floor space includes 3,000 sqft of class 'A' professional office space. The exposed brick sanded, and sealed walls reflect the character of this remodeled 150 year old historic property. The space is heated/cooled with a geothermal system so is not reliant on fossil fuels. Back up emergency power is available if needed as well as UPS service.

An Interview with David PerryCarestream Health, January 29, 2010

Why Summerside?

First and foremost it was the staffing capabilities. PEI in general has been easy, but Summerside has worked out very well for us. There has been very little turnover and we have good quality staff. We have had easy access to staff and that is the most critical thing. There has been easy access to infrastructure as well. What they have done to the building we use, our telecommunications provider, etc. - there have been no show stoppers to our ability to operate here. We've had groups like SRDC that have been essentially enablers for us to work here as well. And so, aside from facilities and aside from infrastructure, the thing that has really made it easy for us here is the availability of talented people.

Was it hard to find staff?

There are always challenges when you are trying to find skilled staff. Finding the volumes of staff that you need is often difficult but people in large locations have that issue as well. People in large locations like the City of Chicago or Toronto, for example, because there is that much more competition there. But as far as finding talent here to be able to accomplish what we need to do; we have not had any problem. I have a folder full of resumes of people who are from PEI, or the Maritimes, who have moved away and want to move back. There has never been any challenge in finding people who want to move here. There has been the challenge of finding people with clinical backgrounds, but that is because of the domain that we work in - radiology - and, simply put, there are not a lot of radiologists or radiology techs that aren't totally consumed in their work elsewhere; so they are hard to find at the best of times. But as far as finding technology people, we have had good success when we have gone off Island, because we were looking for niche skills or more senior skills and there just didn't seem to be the volume of people available locally that were applying when we advertised here.

What would you say if another city asked you to move there?

It has happened many times that we have been approached to move out of Summerside. The answer to that is always, 'No thank you'. This is a great place - we have good resources, we have very low turnover, very low attrition. We have very good production, the facilities are great, and it enables us to do our work here. Our staff are happy here; there really is no reason to leave.

Tell me about incentives.

We've made use of some of the financial opportunities or the financial programs that exist in the province. We haven't needed to make use of a lot of those programs. I don't know about other organizations, but we certainly haven't gone after what those that were set up 10 years ago had. We've only made use of programs over the years as we've needed in order to grow and we've had to do it exponentially. We were competing with other parts of the company that were all over the world and had an economic advantage over us. But that's not why we are here in PEI; we are here because of the talent of the people and, to some degree, the physical location. Being located on the east coast enables us to travel and be close to all of North America. We can get to wherever we need to be; we can get in and out of Europe fairly easily as well.

The staff you recruited from off-Island, did you have a hard time getting them here?

As far as I know, every one of them wanted to move to PEI. They were either an Islander, married to an Islander, or they were people who have been to PEI, fell in love with the place, and decided this is where they wanted to be. So we didn't 'drag' anybody, if you will, into PEI. Maybe they felt it was the only opportunity offered to them or the best opportunity. It was generally a combination of the above; the innovative work that we were able to offer along with their decision that they wanted to live in PEI. The transition was made quite easily.