Contractors Partner on $332 Million Expansion at Harbor UCLA Medical Center

Pierre Sprinkler & Landscape is partnering with Hensel Phelps Construction Co. to complete the emergency room expansion project.

TORRANCE, Calif -- Pierre Sprinkler & Landscape partners up for the first time with Hensel Phelps Construction Co. on the $332 million emergency room expansion project at Harbor UCLA Medical Center.

The project will increase the size of the existing emergency room from 25,000 square feet with 42 surgery bays to about 75,000 square feet with 80 surgery bays. It will also add 190,300 square feet of new hospital facilities, including 16 surgery rooms; an adult and pediatric triage; and a new entrance, lobby and waiting area. Other features will include a new heliport and 544-vehicle parking structure.

Pierre crews are planning for multiple move-ons to complete the project, one of which involves converting a grassy knoll into a parking lot as well as removing existing trees for reuse. In order to convert the knoll, Pierre crews will remove the existing irrigation system and cap any valves that remain.

For the trees, crews will carefully work around the roots, box, store, and maintain 18 trees until the second phase begins. Once Hensel Phelps constructs the parking structure, Pierre crews will move on site again to replant the trees among other landscape and install necessary irrigation.

Other move-ons entail landscaping over 50,000 square feet of landscape area around the medical center. More than 10,000 shrubs, 190 new trees, and 18,000 square feet of sod will be installed. The entire project is slated to be finished by summer 2013.

For the past fifty years the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center has served the southwestern community of Los Angeles County. The hospital originally was opened in 1943 by the U.S. Army and became known as Harbor General Hospital when the county took over two years later. The county later formed a partnership with UCLA Medical School, which continues to run a teaching program at the facility. Rising out of World War II barracks, the hospital is currently one of four level-one trauma centers in LA County.

The 72-acre facility is composed of an 8-story, 553-bed hospital, and a 52,000 square foot Primary Care and Diagnostic Center in addition to a complex of buildings, wooden barracks, and trailers. The on-campus Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, with an annual budget over 50 million dollars, provides extensive laboratory and administrative facilities for faculty investigators.

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