This article originally appeared on CBS Austin.
This week marks another milestone for Dell Children’s Medical Center multi-year expansion project. A topping out of the Dell Children’s fourth bed tower finished Tuesday morning.
“Every piece of concrete, every piece of steel, every piece of dry wall is a direct impact to the care that is given to the children in our community,” said Clayton Salmon, the senior project superintendent for Hoar Construction.
Hoar Construction is the company building Dell Children’s fourth bed tower.
“We started the project back in May of 2021 and today [Tuesday] is the last of the concrete pour with the roof,” said Salmon.
The fourth patient tower will add 72 rooms for acute care and allow Dell Children’s to serve an additional 1,500 patients each year. The tower will consist of:
- 24 beds for new Pediatric Intensive care Unit (PICU)
- 24 beds for in-patient Oncology/Hematology
- 24 beds for Acute Care including a simulation lab
- 24 beds for Acute Care expansion
Officials say this project is part of the more than $700 million expansion plan for pediatric healthcare growth.
“We signify that every day we’re changing the lives of the children of the future,” said Salmon.
All while working through challenges of their own. “We have embraced modular construction with the labor market and the shortage of the labor market with all the construction sites in Austin right now,” explained Salmon.
Modular construction is a building method where portions of a structure are built off-site. “We’re using some pods which or pre-fabricated bathroom units. The white boxes in the building, they’re actually prefinished already,” added Salmon.
The method is saving the original timeline an extra 30 days and is resulting in $250,000 in monthly savings for Dell Children’s.
The expansion is expected to be complete in November 2022.
“The atmospheres that are dealt with today, it’s obviously a little difficult than it was five years ago but we’ve all embraced it as a team and we show up every day to work and we do it safely and the results are proven,” said Salmon.
