Emergency Department Renovation

Swedish Covenant Hospital

Some of the more challenging work electrical contractors and electricians face can be that carried out for hospitals. Requirements to maintain a clean environment create unique tasks upon themselves, but just as important is the need to ensure a critical hospital space stays up and running. All hospital systems, especially in a city like Chicago, maintain a constant flow of doctors, nurses, specialists and patients. No area is more critical than an Emergency Room facility.

Hospital work is also a perfect example where experience plays a key role. Continental Electrical Construction’s account Executive, Mark Goldberg, talks about the myriad of challenges they have been facing during the renovation of the Emergency Depart-ment for Swedish Covenant Hospital of Chicago. The project is slated for completion in December of this year.

“The major challenge is to perform the renovation with the least disruption possible. To help, the construction team needed to insure there were never less than 30 exam rooms available at all times. This required this portion of the project to be built in phases, so that the necessary number of exam rooms and corridors were always in service. The project also required relocation of two existing radiology suites which both had to be moved into a newly renovated area. This meant staggered relocation to insure that there would be one fully operable suite available at all times. The team had to relocate an existing transformer for the radiology equipment over a weekend which required the hospital to use a radiology suite in another building while the transformer was being relocated.

To make the project even more challenging, it requires Tax Incremental Financing with funding from the City. 24% of the work needs to be performed by minority subcontractors, and 4% of the work needs to be performed by women owned businesses. Additionally 50% of the labor needs to be performed by Chicago residents. This meant that besides managing our Continental electrical and structured cabling teams, we must coordinate with our MBE and WBE subcontractors, along with the subcontractors installing the Nurse Call, Sound & Paging, and Fire Alarm systems.

The project will ultimately be successful because of proper planning, management, and a dedicated labor team.

There is nothing like efficiency, training and experience directly contributing to a renovation that affects the lives of people. It’s putting your team’s skills where they matter most.” adds Goldberg. “We couldn’t do this project right if we didn’t put the most qualified people on the job. The result has been a project being done right and staying on schedule.”