By John Flood
 joe hu/town crier Crews work last week on the rebuilding project at El Camino Hospital. |
The construction project for the new El Camino Hospital is on schedule and on budget. Ken King, vice president of facilities services at the hospital, provided details to the hospital board of directors at a public meeting Aug. 22.
“We broke ground on June 1 and we’re excavating and installing the foundation,” said King. “We’re in the early stages of a three-year construction project.”
The project is on schedule, King confirmed.
“In about four months we’ll have the structural steel, the foundations will be poured and we’ll see the structure coming out of the ground,” he said.
The estimated cost of the replacement hospital is $480 million. Approximately 10 percent or $46 million has been spent thus far. This is within the planned budget, said King.
The hospital is building the new facility to meet stricter seismic code requirements set forth by the State of California Hospital Facilities Seismic Safety Act following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
King provided an overview of how he intends to minimize construction delays by tightly managing a daily flow of information and decision-making among three key groups: the building contractor, the architects and the hospital facilities group. King is responsible for all aspects of the design, construction and oversight on the project.
To minimize the environmental impact, debris from the demolition of the Oak Pavilion underwent a separation process at the work site. The hospital construction contractor, Rudolph and Sletten, managed the process with special equipment.
“All of the concrete from the Oak Pavilion will be used for roads and drainable surfaces at the work site,” said King. “Later, it will be integrated with the asphalt at the new parking lots.”
Plans for the new hospital involve a five-story, 450,000-square-foot facility that includes 300 beds.
In addition to the new hospital, the project includes a three-story, 66,000-square-foot medical office building; the two-story new Oak Pavilion; a four-story parking structure; and expansion of the central plant, according to the hospital Web site.
The hospital is scheduled for completion in 2009.
For more information, visit www.elcaminohospital.org.
