MOSES LAKE — The walls are rising at the site of the new Samaritan Hospital. The steel framing started going up about Jan. 19.

Joe Kunkel, a consultant on the project, said at the Jan. 23 meeting of the Samaritan Healthcare commission that the section under construction is part of the emergency room, obstetrics unit and medical and surgical patient rooms. Project manager Abram Jenks said construction crews are working on pouring additional sections of the concrete foundations.

“Things are moving along very quickly. And before you know it, the entire skeleton is going to be up,” Kunkel said.

Commissioners approved a change order for about $235,800 to ZGF, Seattle, the architectural firm designing the project, to rework the plumbing and electrical connections for some rooms that would allow them to be converted to patient rooms without tearing out walls. 

The rooms are on the second and third floors and are designated as operating rooms and for administration. Originally they were designed to be convertible to patient rooms, but the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic and a steep rise in costs caused architects to review that.

Building rooms that couldn’t be converted without some construction was cheaper at a time when the cost of the project was exceeding the available budget, Kunkel said.

“It saves you some money but it also decreases your flexibility in terms of how you use the building,” Kunkel said. “So we felt that now that the bond passed, we should convert those areas.”

Hospital district patrons passed a $130 million construction bond for the project in April 2023. 

Commissioners also approved a change order for about $52,000 to build a small mockup of the exterior and interior systems. Damon Gardella of the Klosh Group, who’s part of the project management team, said Samaritan would get reimbursed for about $25,000 of that. 

Kunkel said the mockup is designed to test how the building will actually work.

“You create this mockup, the windows, the slate (building exterior), the levels, the metal panels, and you create how all those work before you build it on the big building,” Kunkel said. “Your contractors are looking at it, they’re testing it for water and all that kind of stuff.”

The mockup will be about 40 feet, but built in an L shape so contractors can see how the structure will handle things like rain at spots with sharp curves, Gardella said. He cited testing the windows as another example. 

“We’ll set up a water infiltration system — we don’t want the windows to leak. That’s an infamous spot for water seepage. (The mockups) are beneficial on a building of this scale,” he said. 

The mockup is currently under construction on the hospital site, Gardella said.

Samaritan has been given permission by the Washington Department of Health to put up the steel framework, but further permission from DOH will be needed to keep going after that’s finished, Kunkel said.

The DOH has a lot of work right now and experienced some staff turnover, Kunkel said, and that has slowed down the approval process. 

“Because they were overwhelmed, they weren’t able to answer us as quickly as they would like,” he said. “They’re working with us and they realize we’re trying to get this thing going.”

The project also is subject to some reviews by the Washington Department of Labor and Industries, which is looking at the building’s electrical systems, Kunkel said. 

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.

    Shovels move dirt on the site of the new Samaritan Hospital Monday morning. The hospital is being built by Graham Construction.
  

    Construction workers walk the second-floor deck at the site of the new Samaritan Hospital. Voters approved funding for the new hospital last year after hospital district officials pointed out the need for expanded capabilities.