Colorado Delivers for COVID-19

Providing more than 200 beds in less than a month’s time, the two design-build projects involved the renovation of two floors at St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center in Pueblo for non-acute patients and a three-story tower for acute and non-acute patients at St. Anthony’s North in Westminster.

“Both projects required a highly responsive, collaborative approach and the commitment of all stakeholders, and design and trade partners to successfully execute in a condensed time frame,” reports Keegan Snow, design phase manager, Mortenson, Denver.

To keep pace, the project teams worked to quickly disseminate information to enable efficient design making and worked around the clock with multiple crews, continuously commissioning mechanical equipment to ensure that the turnover date was met.

One particular challenge with the St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center project was dealing with vertically-distributed air systems that served multiple floors. “In order to isolate the fourth and fifth floor—the COVID-19 designated floors—we had to seal off the central air supply and exhaust and create new systems to feed into the floors the team was working on,” explains Mike Ross, Mortenson senior project manager.

Unique to new COVID-19 mandated working environments, all meetings were kept to under 10 people with 6-ft. distances. While working at the hospital, all team members additionally complied with Centura’s policies, having their temperature taken when entering the building, wearing masks and limiting workers to two people per room in the 84,000-sq.-ft. space.