ROBINS.
qxd:Layout 1 1/19/09 1:19 PM Page 148
ROBINS & MORTON – HUNTSVILLE HOSPITAL
ED. The end result includes six trauma
rooms and 83 private treatment rooms –
with the ability to expand to 100, if needed.
A stone-hard flooring system – a resin,
monolithic product that doesn’t have to be
waxed – was then installed in the ward.
The flooring is advantageous because it is
very resistant to blood, betadine, and other
medical solutions and waste, Coley
explains. The ward also includes a statscan
room exclusively for the ED, an X-ray room
and three CAT scan rooms.
Bridge Work
To connect hospital buildings, Robins &
Morton built three bridges and a tower
hub building, and demolished an existing
bridge. The bridge work, finished in
November, took nearly a year and cost
$6 million.
The existing bridge crossed U.S. Route
431 – commonly known as Governor’s
Drive – a major Huntsville thoroughfare
that 47,000 drivers travel each day, accord-
ing to a city study. When the state of
Alabama started to widen the road from
five lanes to seven, the existing supports
for the bridge – which connected the main
148 ■ WWW.CONSTRUCTION-TODAY.COM ■ FEBRUARY 2009
building to the Huntsville Rehabilitation
Hospital – were in the way, so the bridge
had to be replaced.
To build the 145-foot-long bridge sec-
tion over the widened road, state and city
officials helped Robins & Morton lay out a
traffic control plan to detour traffic around
the project – but only on weekends. “We
could shut down [the road] at 8 p.m.
Friday, but had to open [it] no later than 5
a.m. Monday,” Coley explains. “We had to
work around the clock a few weekends but
got the project done in seven weekends.”
Robins & Morton also constructed a
240-foot-long bridge that connects a
tower hub to Governor’s Medical Tower
and an 85-foot-bridge that connects the
rehab hospital to the hub.
Governor’s Medical Tower
The work on this new four-story office
building with a five-and-a-half story, pre-
cast parking deck started in July 2007 and
was mostly finished in late 2008, Coley
says; the first and second floors already
are completed and opened. The building is
120,000 square feet, and the garage has
486 parking spaces.
The first floor is home to an independ-
ent spine and neurological center; on the
second floor is the hospital’s surgery cen-
ter; the third houses an independent can-
cer center, a specialized suite for an inde-
pendent gastrointestinal practice and a
portion of the Tennessee Valley Center
for Pain Management; the fourth has one
independent physician suite for neurolo-
gy, a space for Huntsville Hospital’s elec-
troencephalography (EEG) and the main
portion of the pain center.
“The hardest thing about this job site is
that it’s adjacent to the road project and
right in the middle of the medical district,
so there’s no laydown,” Coley explains.
To ensure safety with such a close prox-
imity – 20 feet – to a major roadway,
Robins & Morton placed concrete barriers
between the road and the scaffolding,
Coley says.
With a tight working space, there isn’t
much room for materials storage, so the
60-foot pre-cast concrete T’s for the parking
garage were kept in an area a mile away.
When the site was ready, employees on-site
would radio the truck drivers to bring
them over. ■