JMH building taking shape

By JUSTIN HARMON/Staff

For months now, the new Johnston Memorial Hospital has been taking shape despite weather.
“We’ve been struggling with the weather,” said project manager Dwayne Darlington. “The biggest thing has been the rain.”
Even with the near constant rain, Darlington said they’re still on schedule for their early 2011 opening.
According to Darlington, they’ve done about half of the steel work for the frame of the building as well as poured some floors and quite a bit of site work.
Next week, Darlington said they’ll start doing exterior work, closing in the building before starting on the mechanical and electrical components of the building.
For those more interested in seeing how the hospital is coming along up close, hospital COO Steven Givens said you only need to visit the hospital’s website.
There, you can click on a link that leads to an online webcam that is overlooking the construction site.
“It’s an overall view of the site from the outside,” he said. “As the exterior gets completed, we’ll move the camera inside the lobby.”
The camera, he said, updates every seven minutes.
While construction of the hospital is chugging along, Givens said they’ll also be starting a new, smaller project: building mockups of how the completed rooms in the new hospital will look.
According to Givens, they’ll have mockups of patient rooms, emergency care rooms, critical care units and a few others.
“The staff will go in, see and work with them and we’ll make any necessary changes,” he said.
While Givens said this will be primarily a staff exercise, there are plans to somehow show the public what the new rooms will look like.
The roughly $135 million construction project is located off Lee Highway, between exits 19 and 22, just behind the hospital’s cancer center.
In Feb. 2008, Johnston Memorial Hospital signed a deal with Mountain States Health Alliance giving Mountain States a controlling interest in the hospital, but with a 50-50 governance. According to earlier reports, this was, among other things, one of the biggest catalysts for the new hospital’s construction.
At a press conference for the announcement, hospital CEO Sean McMurray told reporters that the deal would allow the hospital to access more capitol and move forward with the long planned project.
In July 2009, the foundation was poured for the hospital and the real construction began.
Justin Harmon can be reached at 276-628-7101 or