Northeast Georgia Medical Center Gainesville officials and construction crews gathered Friday to celebrate the topping out of the new patient tower, which is slated to open in early 2025.
Over 850 construction workers and a host of NGMC officials enjoyed barbeque, laughs and a sizeable raffle Friday afternoon at the site of the new patient tower being erected on the hospital’s Gainesville campus. The celebration served two purposes: to honor and commend those who have worked on the structure, and to showcase the topping out of the building, as work begins on the interior space.
As construction of the expansion continues, several checkpoints have been hit, with only minor delays, according to Senior Project Manager Michael Percy.
“It's a major milestone for the project, in that it signifies we're reaching the top of the structure, we're celebrating the workforce that got us here, and all the long hours of design and coordination from the beginning thoughts of the project, to project award, to all the planning before we ever stuck a shovel in the ground,” Percy said. “And then truly giving thanks back to these guys and girls that are here day in and day out through cold winter months, through hot summer days.”
“Topping out” is a term used to indicate the structure has been built up to the top floor. While that does not include the full completion of exteriors and interiors, the structural skeleton of the building has reached its apex.
The next big milestone will be finishing the “skin,” or outer surfaces of the building, and then wrapping up the interior, Percy said.
Early on in the bidding process before the expansion got underway, serval hiccups slowed the development, but that never deterred NGMC Gainesville President John Kueven or construction crews from tackling the tower.
“The original plan for this was to go out to bid and start and then the pandemic hit,” Kueven said. “And so across the country, obviously construction took a pause. And same with this project, so we got through that pandemic piece, we were able to move back forward very quickly.”
One piece of technology planned for the new tower will be the larger implementation of negative-pressure rooms. This creates an environment where the air pressure in a patient’s room is lower than outside. When doors or vents are opened into the patient’s room, the outside air flows into the room, forcing all bacteria and potentially contaminated air to stay quarantined.
While this technology has been used previously at NGMC, Kueven said the pause prompted by the pandemic allowed them to make some design adjustments and improve on the original plan.
As the population of Hall County and the surrounding area continues to grow, Kueven noted a greater need for the hospital tower expansion. The new patient tower will bring the total bed count to nearly 800 while bumping NGMC Gainesville up to the third-largest hospital in Georgia, according to NGMC officials.
The new tower will also host an emergency helicopter pad on its roof with a trauma elevator that has direct access to the ER section of the hospital. Earlier this year, Senator John Ossoff announced funds for the helipad and other infrastructure upgrades.
“A key part for the community with this is not only does this have us expanding our acute care and inpatient beds, we have to expand our entire physician manpower to care for this too, so we'll be adding physicians across the community that will help access for the community,” Kueven said.
The tower is set to be completed in December 2024 with an official move-in by staff in January 2025.
