Adding four floors to any building can be challenging. Now imagine you’re adding four floors on top of eight active, patient-filled floors in an operational facility. This is exactly what the project team on Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Center for Advanced Care Vertical Expansion is challenged with.

Last week, the team started erecting steel columns in order to add 165,000 square feet of additional space. To prep for the steel erection, the team set two tower cranes, established material laydown areas, and coordinated with nurses on the floors below to mitigate noise. The team tested a number of construction related activities ahead of real construction so Froedtert team members could hear what the noise level would actually be like. Now that construction is underway, daily emails are sent out to alert staff which areas will be impacted by noise and at what level. Additionally, Mortenson team members routinely walk the halls of the occupied floors below to check in with staff and monitor noise levels.

Steel erection will continue until mid-December 2017. The vertical expansion is scheduled to be complete in spring 2019 and will include two floors of inpatients room and two floors of shell space.