Industry News

Franklin Woods Community Hospital has selected Skanska USA Building as pre-construction and construction manager for its new healthcare facility in Johnson City, Tennessee. Karlsberger Architecture is providing the design for the 249,771-sf hospital, which will be part of the Mountain States Health Alliance (MSHA) system. LEED Silver certification for sustainable design will be sought for the project.

Doctors’ Hospital opened its new 100,000-sf hospital in Bridgeport, Texas, in August of 2008. The 36-bed facility includes three surgery suites, emergency, ICU, MRI, obstetrics, and radiology. QHR provided healthcare and management consultation services. The project includes a 38,000-sf medical office building.

The University of Texas at Austin dedicated the $55 million Biomedical Engineering Building on August 28, 2008. The 141,000-sf, six-story building houses classrooms, research laboratories, and administrative offices for the Biomedical Engineering Department. The College of Natural Sciences and the College of Pharmacy also occupy individual floors. The interdisciplinary building features nine optics labs constructed two stories below grade for minimization of vibration.

3M has selected PM Group of Dublin, Ireland, to provide design and engineering services for a manufacturing facility in Wroclaw, Poland. Slated for completion by June of 2009, the greenfield project will produce aviation and aerospace adhesives and protective foils.

North Carolina State University opened the Man-in-Simulant Test (MIST) laboratory in Raleigh in mid-2008. Located in NC State's College of Textiles, the facility will allow researchers to evaluate the capabilities of protective garments against non-toxic vapors that resemble chemical and biological agents. The laboratory is the only one of its kind located at a university in the United States and was funded by a two-year, $2 million grant from the Department of Defense.