QUINCY — Cost estimates for the new Quincy Valley Medical Center should be available by mid-May. Preliminary exterior design drawings of the building were released late last week, and hospital officials will be hiring electrical and mechanical contractors.

“It definitely feels real now,” said QVMC commissioner Anthony Gonzalez during an April 24 meeting of the hospital district commission.

Hospital district voters approved a construction bond for up to $55 million in August 2022.

Joe Kunkel, a consultant working with hospital district officials, said the electrical and mechanical contractors will be selected by early May.

“We should have our electrical and mechanical (subcontractors) on board - I think we open the bids next week,” Kunkel said.

Those subcontractors will start work immediately, he said.

“Which is great, because we’re just getting to the end of design-development where we’re going to want to be creating budget numbers,” Kunkel said.

Hospital officials will meet with the contractors to go over the entire proposed design, he said, to ensure the cost of the project meets the proposed budget.

Gonzalez said the hospital committee is working on finalizing some of the details.

“We’ll be finalizing colors, color schemes, materials, all that stuff that it takes to fill a 49,000-square-foot building and make it look good,” he said.

Other committees also are concentrating on details.

“We’ve been getting more and more detailed into the design meetings,” Kunkel said. “We’ve been going through and placing cameras, and dealing with access control, which doors will be keyed and which doors will be badged, and all of those things.”

The design teams also are working on the locations of cabinets and other equipment in the rooms.

“Which is a significant piece when it comes to the budget,” Kunkel said.

“We’ve gone through every department - again - with a fine-tooth comb to identify exactly what equipment are we buying new, which things are we moving,” he said.

The design teams also are working to identify what Kunkel called the architecturally significant pieces of the hospital.

“The way I hear people describe it is, if you take the building and you turned it upside down and you shook it, the things that stay in the building are architecturally significant. Because they’re either bolted, they’re plumbed, they’re tied in with the electrical (systems), they’re not mobile,” Kunkel said.

Commissioners approved a contract for about $27,300 with Portland-based PBS Engineering and Environmental, which also has an office in Richland, to inspect the existing hospital and two other buildings on the hospital campus prior to demolition. The company will be looking for hazardous materials that might require extra precautions to remove.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected]

This story has been updated to correct the name of QVMC commissioner Anthony Gonzalez.