Mayo Clinic Celebrates Topping Out of its new 214-bed, $254.6 Million Hospital

Friday, October 06, 2006

The last structural beam is put in place.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Mayo Clinic celebrated the topping out of its new 214-bed hospital today. The topping out not only signals the end of the structural steel work, it also happens to coincide with the halfway mark in the construction project. When the hospital opens in April 2008, it will allow Mayo Clinic to integrate inpatient and outpatient services and bring its teams together in one place to do what's best for patients. Patients will benefit not only from a state-of-the-art facility, but also from the convenience, time savings, expanded resources and increased access to physicians that comes with combining hospital and clinic services on one campus. The hospital will serve regional, national and international patients and focus on specialty care, especially cancer, heart disease, neurology/neurosurgery and transplant. It helps fulfill Mayo's goal of being the premier, patient-centered academic medical center in the Southeast.

The project is adding about 6,400 construction jobs for three years, increasing Mayo Clinic's economic impact on the region and providing health-care jobs. The economic impact of the hospital and a separate lab construction project is estimated at $644 million.

About the hospital:

• 214 beds, 6 floor hospital tower connected to expanded Mayo Building (added 3 floors to existing 2-story building).
• 650,000 square feet
• 14 operating rooms
• STEEL: 3,900 tons of structural steel. Equivalent of 2,454 Toyota Camrys.
• WORKERS: About 1,400 different workers have been on the project since it began.
• Typical daily workforce: 200.
• General contractor: Centex Corp.
• Architect: Perkins+Will

The beam and the tree represent one of the construction industry's oldest customs - the "topping out" of a completed project. The custom of placing a tree on a completed structure came with immigrants to the United States and became an integral part of American culture in barn raisings and housewarmings.

Today the custom is continued most frequently on completed structures such as bridges and skyscrapers. Ironworkers have carried on the topping out tradition and consider it their own. While others join the celebration of topping out, it is the ironworkers and their skills that make them first to reach the pinnacle of a structure, and it is around this group of workers that topping out revolves.

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