Hunzinger takes baby steps for St. Joseph

An employee from Wall-Tech Inc., Madison, tapes and finishes the drywall in a new labor/delivery room at St. Joseph Regional Medical Center. Photos courtesy of Hunzinger Construction Co.

It wasn't a typical parade.

It was more important. Hunzinger Construction Co. had just completed its first phase of work at St. Joseph Regional Medical Center in Milwaukee. It was time for the neonatal intensive care unit to move to its space in the new six-story, 126,000-square-foot women's and infant's south tower that the Brookfield general contractor had built.

"They had a parade of incubators going through the hallway," said Jon Jansen, Hunzinger vice president and senior project manager on the St. Joseph job. "We just stood back and moved out of the way."

But Hunzinger couldn't stay out of the way for long because the second phase of work called for 12 smaller phases as the contractor remodeled its way around the third floor of the hospital. The remodeling work started in the space vacated by the departing NICU in January 2004 and continued when several postpartum rooms moved to the tower.

"It's 12 phases because it's like dominoes or the bean-and-cups game where you shuffle it around, and every time one moved, they vacated an area that we would remodel," Jansen said. "So we're marching around the third floor in phases completing new spaces."

Those phases have included remodeling work in the pediatric area, antepartum space and the prenatal assessment center. It's also covered three operating rooms and, more recently, a plan to rearrange the labor/delivery rooms, expand them and build six new rooms. Hunzinger targeted April 9 as the turnover date for the six new labor/delivery rooms and a main labor/delivery nurse station.

"The whole remodel is moving departments around and upgrading so they surround the south tower as a focal point," Jansen said. "Ultimately, they'll have a bigger, more state-of-the-art facility with the same departments."

The remodel portion of the project covers 80,000 to 90,000 square feet, but Jansen said the job is about more than meeting deadlines and improving the hospital's operations.

"You go into the tower, and you're looking at 2-day-old babies in incubators, and you just built the area," he said. "It's a weird feeling knowing you built something so important.

"We're doing something that's not the norm. It's a little more personal. The stakes are a little higher in a hospital."

- Chris Thompson

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