A hospital has no planned shutdown window, so every tie-in is a live-system event with a written switching plan and a back-out. That single fact drives how a hospital addition, a central plant or a utility upgrade is built. The work is closer to a continuously operating plant than to a commercial building, and the contractor has to sequence it the way a plant engineer would: isolate, tie in, prove, restore, and never leave a critical load on a single source longer than the plan allows.
We take on the industrial side of healthcare construction: central energy plants, emergency generator and switchgear yards, underground duct banks, site utilities and fire water, building structure and shell for towers and additions, and renovations inside occupied campuses. The owner's hospital team and design architect set the clinical program. We bring the heavy civil, concrete, utility and equipment-pad discipline that those programs depend on, and we coordinate with the clinical build-out trades through a shared schedule.
The people we write for are facilities directors, capital project managers and health system real estate teams who have to explain every outage to clinical leadership. Our submittals, schedules and outage requests are written to that audience.
Redundancy, outages and the infection control envelope
The essential electrical system, medical gas, and critical HVAC all have redundancy requirements, and a construction plan has to preserve them. We map each system on the campus, identify single points of failure that the work will touch, and propose temporary sources or phased cut-overs so that no clinical area loses a required service. Outage requests go to the facility team with a description of the work, the duration, the affected areas and the restoration test.
Construction in or beside an occupied hospital also needs an infection control risk assessment. Dust, water intrusion and demolition debris are the main threats, and the controls are physical: sealed barriers, negative pressure, protected corridors, walk-off mats and wet cutting. Concrete coring, saw cutting and demolition are scheduled around sensitive areas such as operating rooms and sterile processing, and the barriers are inspected daily.
Plants, yards and structure
A central energy plant is an industrial building in a healthcare setting: chillers, boilers, pumps, cooling towers, switchgear, generators and fuel storage, each on its own pad or foundation. We pour the equipment bases to the manufacturer's anchor bolt template, build the plant structure, and route underground electrical duct banks that feed the buildings from the plant, concrete-encased and tested.
For work inside an operating campus, our phased construction on occupied sites method divides the project into zones, each with its own access, barrier and turnover. When existing buildings are being upgraded, the approach in industrial renovations and modernization applies, with demolition by hand or saw where vibration and dust are controlled. New patient towers add deep foundations, tall formwork and crane logistics on a crowded site.
Sequencing around the live campus
The schedule for a hospital project is built around outages, inspections and equipment lead times. Switchgear, generators, chillers and air handlers can take many months to arrive, and a delay in any of them can hold the whole critical path. We include them in preconstruction procurement and track fabrication through shop inspection to delivery. Hospital inspections, including the fire marshal, the health department and the owner's commissioning agent, are placed on the schedule as hold points.
Construction logistics matter on a campus. Haul routes avoid ambulance entries and patient drop-offs, crane picks are scheduled for low-traffic hours, and deliveries are staged off site and called in to meet a fixed window. We plan parking for the construction workforce away from patient and visitor lots. The target is no unplanned outages and no complaints from clinical staff about noise, dust or access.
Campus-scale investment on the Front Range
Large-scale healthcare investment is concentrated in a few campuses. The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora covers 256 acres (578 acres with the Fitzsimons Life Science District), has nearly 25,000 faculty and staff, and includes a $644 million, 820,000 square foot university hospital opened in 2007. In Lone Tree, RidgeGate's West Village holds about 10,000 jobs, with HCA HealthONE Sky Ridge Medical Center (opened 2003, Level II trauma center, more than 300 beds) among its main employers.
In Parker, AdventHealth Parker at 9395 Crown Crest Boulevard has 179 beds and began a $300 million, seven-story, 186,000 square foot tower adding sixty beds with a groundbreaking on January 7, 2025. Intermountain Health Lutheran Hospital in Wheat Ridge, a 226 bed hospital, opened its new building on August 3, 2024. These projects show that hospitals here expand in phases beside live operations, which is the condition we plan for.
Safety on a campus with patients
Safety planning has two audiences: the workers and everyone who is not on the project. We run a site-specific plan covering fall protection, excavation, crane operations, hot work, confined space and lockout, and we add controls for pedestrians, ambulances and vulnerable patients. Hot work permits and fire watch are required whenever welding or cutting happens within the building, and fire alarm and sprinkler impairments are logged and restored before shift end.
Utilities near the work are located and marked before any excavation. Medical gas lines, oxygen tanks, generator fuel and high-voltage feeders are all on the campus, and an unplanned strike can interrupt care. We use vacuum excavation and potholing where records are uncertain, and we hold a utility coordination meeting before digging starts. Our medical office page covers the outpatient buildings that often sit beside these campuses.
Code position and review
Colorado commercial building codes are adopted city by city and county by county rather than as one statewide code. The Home Builders Association of Metro Denver tracker dated January 20, 2026 shows Adams County, Arvada and Castle Rock on the 2018 I-codes, Aurora and Arapahoe County on 2021, and Boulder, Golden and Cherry Hills Village on 2024. A hospital project is therefore designed to the local edition and its amendments, plus the state and federal healthcare requirements the design team identifies.
Healthcare plan review is longer and more detailed than ordinary commercial review, and phased projects may need multiple permits or a phased permit. Publicly owned hospitals and health districts add public procurement rules, which our government and municipal page describes. We start permit planning during preconstruction, identify the long-lead review items and carry the review dates on the schedule. For the data and power infrastructure that supports hospital operations, the same discipline appears in our data center work.
Bring us the outage constraints
Send the campus plan, the systems being touched and the outage rules. We will return a phasing plan with each outage and hold point scheduled.
Common Questions
How do you protect critical systems during utility tie-ins?
With a written method of procedure that lists each valve, breaker and switch in sequence, a temporary source where the system requires one, and a back-out plan. The procedure is reviewed and signed by the facility team before the outage. We test the restored system, document the results and return control of the system to the hospital.
Can a central plant be replaced without taking the hospital offline?
Often, yes, by building the new plant alongside the old one, connecting to the distribution system in stages and commissioning each piece of equipment before switching load. The risk is concentrated in a small number of tie-ins, each of which has its own outage plan. Redundancy during the transition is the first design question.
What is the usual lead time for generators and switchgear?
It varies by manufacturer and market conditions, and it can be many months, so we get current quotes during preconstruction and write the delivery date into the schedule. We also flag alternatives, such as a rental generator for temporary service, if the permanent unit would arrive after the outage window.
How do you control dust and noise next to patient areas?
We isolate the work with sealed barriers and negative pressure, schedule noisy tasks for low-census hours when the owner agrees, and use tools with dust capture. The facility's infection prevention staff sets the criteria and inspects the barriers, and we take corrective action the same day.
Do hospital projects use different permits from other buildings?
The local building department issues the permit under the local code edition, and healthcare occupancies add reviews by the fire authority and state health agencies. Phased permits are common for campus work so an early-phase scope can begin while later phases are still under review.