KONSTANTIN VENGEROWSKY/Clarendon Citizen - Clarendon Health System Director of Maintenance Brion Haynes and Facilities Development & Engineering Director Bill Upp review progress on the Clarendon Memorial Hospital construction site.
Hospital expansion is on schedule
The Clarendon Health System’s hospital expansion project is on schedule, and its first phase could be completed by the end of 2011, according to hospital officials.
“The outside framing of the building is complete and outer walls are starting to come up,” said Bill Upp, the health system’s director of Facilities Development & Engineering.
Upp said that construction has gone smoothly, except for a few setbacks due to cold weather. He said that freezing fall temperatures delayed a few concrete pours, but other than that everything was on time.
“If the weather cooperates we may be a little bit ahead of schedule in the spring,” he said.
The construction site has roughly 15-35 workers on it four days a week.
“We’re coming along good,” General Foreman Tom Cole said. Cole, with GMK Associates of Columbia, is the on-site supervisor of the project. “We’ve had really good cooperation with all of the community members.”
The project is divided into several phases. The first phase is building a new surgery department with three operating rooms, two procedure rooms, and 14 recovery bays. This will also be the new home of the outpatient surgery department.
Also, on the first floor, will be the new emergency department. It will be completely re-designed with 22 treatment spaces and a new treatment clinic. The second floor will have 24 new private patient care rooms.
“Construction of the new building should be complete by late 2011–early 2012,” Upp said.
The second phase of the project will be the re-fitting of spaces that are being replaced in the first phase. This will include remodeling areas into classrooms, expanding the medical records office, and remodeling the delivery rooms, according to Upp. Refitting and remodeling spaces that are currently in the hospital should be done by early 2012, according to Upp.
Phase one also includes the expansion of the energy plant and installation of new generators that will support the new facilities. Upp said that walls for the new powerhouse, which will include two boilers and two additional generators, have also been put up. The generators will give the hospital the capability of uninterrupted power during power outages.
Upp said that after the outer walls are put up on the new building, the next step will be putting in interior walls, stairs, plumbing and fire proofing the interior beams that hold up the structure. After completing those improvements, painting, ceiling lighting and cabinet installation will be put in.
The health system’s expansion will be South Carolina’s first Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED)-silver certified inpatient facility. It will include high-efficiency heating, ventilating, and air conditioning equipment, rainwater harvesting, energy-efficient lighting and environmentally-friendly paints and adhesives.
“We have a consultant who is making sure the construction is following all of the LEED requirements,” Upp said.
