New Portage hospital getting exterior and windows on to commence with interior work

The new Portage la Prairie hospital build is moving ahead steadily, and there's currently a lot of activity at the site.

Implementation Lead Kyle MacNair says the southeast photo below shows the exterior side at the front of the building. Behind the scaffolding, they're putting up the final exterior finishes. 

Southwest corner

"Tyndall stone exterior is going up on a large section of the front face of the hospital, right behind the large tree. On your left (photo above), you can see quite a bit of the Tyndall stone going up and it's that's the final phase of the exteriors. It's just beginning that final phase of the exterior finishes on the hospital. Then in terms of the overall building, if you go to the northeast corner (photo below), you can see the last areas that they still have to close in."

He notes this work will continue over the next month. This will render the entire building closed in, leaving them to work their way all the way around for the external clotting in the building. 

"From an interior perspective, they're working on the mechanical and electrical rough-ins and also framing of the interior walls of several of the areas of the hospital are going on. All the safety portions, the fire suppression. and fire insulation that's going in, is also to be completed in the next short, little while. Then that's when they can really start finishing off with the drywall -- a lot of the interior walls and the rooms inside the building."

He notes at this point, several windows are now installed. In the photo of the northeast corner below, you can see some of the windows that are in, but not all of them are installed on all the floors yet. 

Northeast corner

"That's going to progress steadily over the next several months to complete and fully seal up that envelope. From there, it'll be lots and lots of work on the interiors to complete all the interior functions of the hospital."

The image below shows one of the last areas that's being built up -- the cultural room in the centre upper level. 

Looking southward

"On the building, you can see they're still doing some of the concrete work, but the steel is up on the circular cultural room that's going to be sitting above the outpatient entrance to the hospital. That's one of the major activities going on at this point in the project."

MacNair says everything's on schedule. It's still quite a substantially long process of future work, but they're on budget.

Tuesday of this week will see MacNair on-site to meet with the construction team to go through a few of the spaces.

"Every two weeks, we have a meeting on site with all the consultants and the construction team to do a bit of a walk-through and to see some of the areas. Sometimes, they want us to review certain components of the project to get some opinions."

Click below to view larger photos: