RiverView Health and Mortenson Construction held a “Topping Off” celebration Tuesday for the RiverView 2020 project. The topping off is a milestone that signifies the end of the steel structure work. For Mortenson, the day was also an opportunity to recognize the work and effort put in by their trade partners who’ve helped with the structural part of the project. “It’s a huge milestone in any project finishing structural steel and just the structure in general,” said construction manager Jason Toso. “It’s a big occasion. We like to celebrate it with our customers. We do that in the traditional manner of flying the final beam with a tree and the American flag attached to it. It’s open for everyone to put their signatures on it and then that lives within the existing structure for the life of the building. It’s a good moment for the customers and a good moment for the team. We celebrated today by feeding all the trades partners on-site with a lunch thanking them for their hard work. To date, we’ve put in about 20,000 man-hours of work so a lot of time, a lot of effort from a lot of trade partners from the local area so we wanted to thank them appropriately. And thank the staff as well. We interrupted their normal lifestyle. We’re bringing something beautiful to the community, and it will be well worth it, but it doesn’t come without some interruptions. And we appreciate their patience and the public’s patience with some of the increased construction activities and general interruptions that come with a big scale project such as this.”
The 20,000 man-hours already put into the construction is the equivalent of more than 9.5 years of work for a single individual. The tree lifted into place with the beam is a tradition dating back to when structures were built entirely of wood. “We always put a tree on the top of it,” said Toso. “In the olden days, if you will, construction was primarily out of wood, so the tree was symbolic to the tree goods for all of the fallen trees it took to build the structure. Things have changed over time. Structures are primarily metal, but the tradition carries on.”
A large structure such as the hospital requires large quantities of steel, class five gravel, bolts, and concrete. Toso said about 445 tons of steel were needed for the structure and noted many of the other large numbers associated with the project. “The structure here is about 445 tons of iron set in place with the heaviest piece being about 3,800 lbs. which is the size of a small car,” said Toso. “It took about 8,200 bolts to put it all together. So, big numbers when we’re looking at it. Sometimes it doesn’t look like much, but there are a lot of little pieces that go into it. We excavated 8,500 yards of clay. We haul in 19,000 tons of class five to build up the interior to the plans and specs. And we hauled off about 4,500 tons of concrete and general demo debris taking the old building out of here. A lot has gone in [to the structure], and we’re still putting in. To date, we’ve about 2,700 cubic yards of cementitious fill with that being CDF fill, concrete foundations, concrete slabs, slabs on the deck, and we’re still moving forward with that. A lot of great work done by the local trade partners and everybody here in the community.”
The recent weather has been a hindrance, according to Toso, but the construction schedule has been timed right that it hasn’t stopped production to date. “We were fortunate enough to have the schedule work in our favor where we had a lot of our blacktop down for our parking lots and a lot of our concrete foundations in and our class five infill in the inside of the building,” said Toso. “So, the rain and the snow has been a hindrance, but it hasn’t stopped production out here. As much as we can take it, the guys are out there working. If it gets too rough, they’ll shut down for the day, but for the most part, we’ve been able to keep on pretty well. So, for schedule, the rain has impacted us, but six weeks ago, we said we were going to set that final beam on October 15, and here we are.”
