“We’re making good progress,” said Randy Schwan, Trinity vice president of mission integration. “It’s been going very well.”

Dave Kohlman, Trinity vice president of facilities, said the major progress over the winter was internal.

“The focus right now is still the interior of the building – studding of, framing of walls on the first floor, and starting on the second floor and putting up the steel studs in the walls as well as continuing the progress on the Central Energy Plant to get that completed or as close to completion as possible to be able to start providing conditioned air for the contractors as they continue to move forward with mechanical aspects of the job,” he said.

The Central Energy Plant should be complete by early June to serve the buildings while construction continues. Escalators already have been placed.

Surgery Director Denise Dahl, far left, and members of her staff offer suggestions to Facilities Vice President Dave Kohlman after viewing a mockup of a surgery suite in this March 19 photo from Trinity Health.

The main focus has been on the first and second floor of the 594,000-square-foot hospital because of the more complex design for those critical service areas. However, similar framing work is occurring from the ground up on the connected 196,000-square-foot clinic building.

The 148-bed hospital will include advanced cardiac, neurosurgical and orthopedic care, state-of-the-art surgical suites, new birthing areas and an expanded emergency /Level II trauma center with 24 treatment bays.

Construction workers have been creating mock-up rooms for an emergency exam room, trauma bay, operating suite, intensive care unit room and a hospital medical/surgery patient room.

Staff teams have been reviewing the mock-up rooms as construction progresses to ensure the planned layout for countertops, lights, storage, electrical outlets and other fixtures are where they need to be for the best efficiency.

“Those teams can walk through the mock-up rooms during all stages of construction so that they’re fully satisfied that the finished product that will be throughout the hospital will be adequate,” Schwan said.

Kohlman said it is one thing to see the layout on a piece of paper but quite another thing to walk through a room as it is being formed to get a feel for how the space will work.

It’s a phased process, he added. Initially, staff stick notes on studded walls to indicate where certain features should go. The next phase occurs after rooms have been sheet-rocked with outlets in place to ensure the room is a good design. The final step is to examine the finished product.

“They do all this before they start the process of building 12 ER exam rooms, for example, so they have it right the first time, and then move forward, building up the rest,” Kohlman said.

The process of reviewing mock-up rooms was occurring in late March, with finalization expected soon.

Some small sections of the building exterior have been sided with the material that will serve as its final skin. Many pallets of the exterior material were delivered to the site for work to begin in earnest this month.

Kohlman said the public will be pleasantly surprised at how quickly the exterior of the building will change to a more attractive look.

“It will be an eye-catcher. It will turn people’s heads as they drive by because you are going to see some change on the exterior of the building,” he said.

Landscaping also will be done this summer, along with more interior work. Around 300 workers have been at the site, and that is expected to increase, to possibly as high as 600 workers.

Although construction is expected to be completed by December of 2022, Trinity won’t transition to the medical complex until mid-2023. During the first part of 2023, Trinity will be moving in equipment and conducting testing for quality assurance. Most of the diagnostic and laboratory equipment will be new.

“Some of that has to be in place and operating for months before it can be used on a patient. It is a very sophisticated type of equipment,” Schwan said.

“Also, it’s a busy time out there. We’ll have staff out there doing walk-throughs and scenario engagement,” he said of those last months before opening. “The workflow is going to be different in the new facility than it is here in the old facility. And so, staff will have to get that workflow ironed out to make sure that they have the work plan in place and that is accurate.”