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Clark Construction helps transform COVID-19 facility

BLUE ISLAND - Clark Construction Group, in collaboration with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has successfully transformed the MetroSouth Medical Center - a shuttered hospital south of Chicago - into an Alternate Care Facility to treat COVID-19 patients.

The re-activated facility provides 585 surge beds, including 265 high acuity beds to support critically ill patients. The fast-track project was delivered in just 22 days.

The MetroSouth Medical Center served the Blue Island community for more than a century before closing its doors in late 2019. Clark led a design-build team in revitalizing the once dormant facility into a fully operational ACF, converting spaces, such as the emergency department, labor and delivery, as well hospital office space, into patient bed areas. Crews also retrofit existing patient rooms with negative pressure units to meet air change and infection control requirements, as well as reactivated medical gas systems to support patients who require ventilators. Their scope also included ensuring that all 26 essential hospital systems were inspected, repaired or replaced, and fully operational.

Nearly three dozen Clark personnel, along with design partners and more than 200 craftworkers, raced to meet the project's ambitious timeline. While the challenges of an aggressive schedule and complex scope were further magnified by efforts to maintain stringent safety protocols during the pandemic,

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