Health check
Contractors ride wave of hospital construction, but work may be cresting

By Martin Schwartz

"Healthy" is the best way to describe the condition of health care and medical construction in the state of Louisiana going into the fifth year of the new millennium.

Contractors report a steady to slight growth in the number of medical projects they will be undertaking in 2005 and several of those jobs have grown during the construction process.

"There's a lot of medical work going on down here right now and a lot more we'll see in the future," said Brian Gates, project manager for Walton Construction Co. Inc.'s expansion and renovation of the Women's Center in Houma. "Actually, our company (with an office in New Orleans) has three other major hospital jobs going on in this area right now."

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New medical and health care projects continue to be planned throughout the state. In December, Christus Schumpert announced the construction of the five-story Children's Hospital within Schumpert's St. Mary Place in Shreveport. The 60,000-sq.-ft. hospital will include a 22- bed pediatric inpatient unit, 17-bed pediatric intensive care unit and a 7,000-sq.-ft. outpatient clinic and after-hours clinic.

Construction of the $20 million project is scheduled to begin this spring.

But while new projects are encouraging, the construction boom might be coming to an end. Loren C. Scott, president of Loren C. Scott & Associates, a 22-year-old consulting firm, said a lot of the growth in medical construction can be attributed to specialty doctors and surgeons "creaming" their skills from general hospitals to start their own hospitals.

"That's what was driving a lot of the hospital expansion for awhile," Scott added. "Doctors in the high-end specialty areas like neurosurgeons and orthopedists were building these specialty hospitals. But I think legislation has been passed to put a stop to that. I don't think you'll see the volume of that activity that you've seen in the past, so that will slow it down a little bit."

Following are the largest health care and medical projects currently in progress in Louisiana.

North expansion and renovation, Thibodaux Regional Medical Center. Walton Construction's $30 million expansion project at Thibodaux Regional Medical Center has been divided into four phases, said Matthew Tanory, project engineer. The first phase is the construction of a single-story central plant to house the new mechanicals required to provide necessary utilities to service areas to be expanded in future phases.

The project broke ground in July.

Construction on the second phase, a two-story Heart and Vascular Center, began concurrently with the central plant project. The center will include a new cardiac catheterization and vascular procedures lab in addition to the existing cardiac catheterization lab that will be moved to the new building.

The structure is being designed to allow for further expansion of the heart and vascular lab.

A third phase, to begin later this year, will connect the new construction with the existing hospital, followed by a new patient tower with all private rooms and decentralized nursing areas. The tower will have a structural capacity for up to four floors, with 30 all-private rooms and the ability to add 30 more patient rooms.

Contract completion date for all phases is February 2006.

Medical office building and parking garage, Thibodaux Regional Medical Center. Also on the TRMC campus, Thompson Construction Co. Inc. of Thibodaux is building a five-story, 250,000-sq.-ft. medical office building and a 4.5-story parking garage adjacent to the building. The $12.4 million project began in May and is scheduled for a March completion.

The office building is being constructed of structural steel, concrete, brick and composite metal panels, but will not be finished out by Thompson, according to T. Benton Thompson, project manager.

"We're just doing the shell," he said.

This project and the north expansion and renovation project are part of a $70 million program to double the size of the Thibodaux Regional Medical Center and create a state-of-the-art healing environment.

In addition to the medical office building and parking garage, the overall project also includes an expansion of the emergency department, an expanded women's center, a state-of-the-art culinary center, a breast imaging center and a new main entrance.

Eunice Regional Medical Center. Batten & Shaw Inc. of Nashville has begun construction of a new 60-bed, 86,500-sq.-ft. medical center in Eunice, located 40 mi. from Lafayette. But while physical construction began in November, plans for the $17 million facility have been in motion for two years.

The new single-story hospital is being completed in one phase adjacent to the two-story, 40,000-sq.-ft. Eunice Physician's Plaza. A walkway will connect the two buildings upon completion in spring 2006.

"Right now the site is totally clear," said Larry Bodtman, project manager. "We're just doing roadwork and starting to pour footers for our column lines."

Bodtman said the building will >> be "plain," consisting of a steel construction with an EIFS exterior and a metal stud and drywall interior on a concrete monolithic foundation.

Expansion/renovation, Opelousas General Hospital. Originally planned as a five-story addition to the Opelousas General Hospital, the current expansion and renovation project now calls for a sixth story to be completed, bringing the project cost to about $23.3 million. The construction of a five-level, 365-car parking garage is included in the project.

"In the original design, the foundation and structure were designed to hold an additional sixth floor," said Corey Lloyd, project manager. "We're in the process now of getting drawings to put that sixth floor on."

Though the sixth floor will be finished only as a shell at this point, Lloyd said the owners felt it was more cost effective to build it while cranes were already in place.

The 96,000-sq.-ft. structure is a steel frame with slabs on deck built on a pile foundation.

"The hospital has an L-shaped shear wall that goes up six stories, plus a penthouse level on the roof," Lloyd said. "On one side, three elevators go inside and on the other side is the stairwell, so there are 58 piles underneath that shear wall alone."

The new addition will connect directly to the old structure on the ground level only. Walkways will connect floors two through five.

The project is scheduled for completion in early 2006.

Expansion/renovation, Women's Center, Houma. The $12.9 million expansion of the Women's Center in Houma will provide approximately 85,000 sq. ft. of state-of-the-art maternity and birthing services. The two-story building has been designed to allow an additional third floor to be added at a later date.

When completed in July, the facility will feature nine labor and delivery rooms as well as an undetermined number of patient rooms.

The new building is being constructed on land that had formerly been used for parking. The concrete pile foundation will support a structure that project manager Brian Gates said has "a little bit of everything in it. It's got a small amount of cinderblock for wainscoting and running up under the stairwells. And it's got a lot of composite metal panels and curtain wall."

The block being used has an exposed aggregate for a polished finish, requiring a lot of quality control.

The finished ultramodern look will not match previous construction and Gates said no effort was made to achieve a uniform look.

Orthopedic office plaza, Our Lady of the Lake Hospital, Baton Rouge. The $13 million, three-story Orthopedic Office Plaza being built by Milton Womack Inc. of Baton Rouge will be the new home for Our Lady of the Lake Hospital's orthopedic surgeons, housing operating and patient rooms.

The 106,000-sq.-ft. facility broke ground in April 2004.

Project manager Michael Middleton said parts of the first and third floor are being built as a shell for future occupation.

"The whole shell will be done as a single phase and most of the interior buildout will be done in this phase as well, but there will be a couple of areas that will be built out later," he said. "We'll actually get the drawings before the job is over, so it will be a continuing process."

The office plaza will feature a brick exterior with some precast columns on the front as well as glass and curtain walls. Special effort is being made to match the exterior brick to an existing parking garage adjacent to the building.

In spite of rainy weather in October and November, Middleton said the building is on target for a mid-July completion.

Natchitoches Parish Hospital. The first phase of expansion and renovation of the Natchitoches Parish Hospital is nearing completion, but Randy Deloach, project manager for Skip Converse Inc. of Alexandria, said there might be another year of work ahead.

The $10.7 million project involves the construction of a new 62,956-sq.-ft., two-story building connected to the existing 78-bed hospital.

The new building will ultimately house the hospital's ICU, operating and patient rooms on its second floor, with administration on the ground floor. An aluminum prefab heliport will be attached to the roof.

The structural steel construction will be covered with STO synthetic plaster to match the EIFS exterior of the existing building.

Deloach said the older building will eventually be cleared for an extensive 10-month renovation in which the interior will essentially be demolished and rebuilt with new drywall and suspended ceilings.

Services were to begin moving into the expanded facility by the end of January and renovation work on the existing building will begin immediately thereafter. Overall completion is scheduled late this year.

Allied Health Facility & Therapy Pool, Shreveport. Walton Construction began work on LSU's $10.4 million Allied Health Facility and Therapy Pool project in September with a foundation of 283 16-in.-diameter cast piles going 50 ft. deep.

There are essentially two buildings, said project manager Brent Bollman. A four-story concrete structure with a brick façade houses classrooms and administrative offices. It is attached to a gymnasium of all steel construction that contains a track, workout area and hydrotherapy pool.

"We're going to build the concrete structure and then the steel structure and then there's an attachment structure in the middle that we'll put the whole thing together with," Bollman said. "It's almost like two separate buildings: one concrete, one steel."

Once completed, the facility will offer students roughly 75,000 sq. ft. of classroom and gymnasium area. The project will be completed in February 2006.

Chalmette Medical Center addition, Chalmette. Three phases of expansion in a yearlong renovation project will help transform the Chalmette Medical Center into an 83,700-sq.-ft. facility, starting with a two-story construction being built by The McDonnel Group of Metairie.

The first phase of the $9.1 million project will add 30 private rooms and increase the hospital's ICU to 29 beds. That phase began in July with a new foundation consisting of 530 piles ranging from 62 to 70 ft., said Jason Zuckerman, project manager.

The structural steel building features a composite second floor and insulation board roof. The exterior skin is all metal stud framing with EIFS to match the existing structure.

A second phase, to begin concurrent with the first phase includes additional patient rooms and new lab facilities. The third phase, to begin upon completion of the first two phases, calls for the renovation of the old ICU into offices and shell space for future use.

Zuckerman said The McDonnel Group will also be working on two additional projects for the hospital: a new kitchen and cafeteria expansion and the addition of a new wing for a permanent MRI facility.

Both projects are slated to begin early this year.