“At Graham Construction, we specialize in building relationships. That’s our core purpose.”
That’s Matt Foster from Graham Construction. He is the superintendent on the construction and remodeling project underway at Crawford County Memorial Hospital (CCMH).
“I’ve been with Graham for two years. As soon as I signed on with Graham, I knew it was a good fit. We have our core processes, our core values. That’s what we’re all built around. Construction is just a benefit to us. And what people have to understand, I think, is that Graham does lots of various kinds of construction projects, whether that’s a hospital, bank, or school, or whatever else it might happen to be. Graham Construction was the general contractor when the replacement hospital for CCMH was built in 2010-11. It’s great to be back and we’re looking forward to a great project again.”
The first hurdle in the construction project was the installation of a new sanitary sewer line for the medical clinic expansion.
“We had to close the north patient parking lot. The sanitary sewer for the new expansion comes out that way. So we closed that parking lot, tore the concrete out, dug down, got our sanitary structure pipe installed, backfilled the trench, got rock back in there, opened that back up and then moved to the south side of the drive to repeat the process. And that’s done. Patients and families will notice when they drive through the main drive or parking area at the north hospital entrance, there’s still gravel in those trenches. At some point in near the future, we will be back to put in concrete.”
With the first step of the project completed, Foster says some demolition of the current exterior of the hospital is required to get to the next phase of the project.
“In the clinic parking to the west of the building, we’re tearing out all the paving where the new clinic addition is going to be located. Next, we’ll get everything graded, then dig the footings and begin installing footings for the new addition. We’ll also go over and dig footings outside the rehab services area. We’ll have to shut the north drive down again for a few days to put in new footings there.”
The canopy outside of the clinic building has also been removed.
“With any project of this size, there is always some destruction that’s going to have to happen. We’re also re-doing the storm sewer to accommodate the new construction. We’re excavating the west side of the clinic to make way for the expansion as well.”
Foster says the most difficult or complicated aspect of the project so far have been a few delays in completing various aspects of the plumbing.
“We have had a couple of delays in installing the sanitary structure itself. We’ve had a little bit of weather that slowed us down. I think getting out on site and getting into a work flow is always an issue. Sometimes the drawings are different from what is actually built. Everything looks good on paper; you’re used to looking at the drawings but when you get out on site there’s things that are missed. If you can’t see it, if it’s hidden in some way, whether it’s underneath the ground or inside a wall, it’s really difficult to be able to know what you’re dealing with until you actually get there.”
Over the next few weeks, Foster says additional work will be done both outside and inside the hospital.
“We’ve already touched on the excavation and installation of footings on the north and west side of the building. Another major change will be in the installation of temporary walls inside the hospital somewhere during the second week of September. We’ll be building those walls to keep any of the construction or remodeling dust and dirt from entering patient care areas. People need to understand that those are going to be sealed because we have to make sure that the hospital clinic remains a sanitary safe environment. We’ll also have air scrubbers that we use to filter the air that’s in our space. The scrubbers come equipped with particle counters that will count the amount of particles in the air to tell us if a clean in the environment we’re working in.”
Foster counsels patience and vigilance over the next month or so.
“I would kindly ask patients and visitors to pay attention to the signage because we will be closing down drives here and there. Please don’t enter the construction area. There will be a lot of trucks coming in and out of the site. As I said, in September we’re going to be moving inside and doing some demolition. All those areas are going to be barricaded off so the public will not have access to those. There will be some noise and it could be disturbing at times. We will do our best to try and make sure that we keep it as quiet as we can. We’re doing all this to make everything better. The old saying goes ‘if you’re going to make an omelet you got to break a few eggs.’ We’re in that egg breaking stage, I think, here at CCMH on our project.”
