Work starts on $8m St Vincent’s Hospital Toowoomba ICU by Hutchinson Builders
Construction is starting a major extension to one of Toowoomba’s biggest hospitals, and the project involves a 35m-tall crane.
Development
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An enormous 35m-tall crane will assist in the $8m expansion of one of Toowoomba’s largest hospitals.
Hutchinson Builders has started construction on the new intensive care unit at St Vincent’s Private Hospital.
The extension proposal, which was approved by the Toowoomba Regional Council in September, will be built as a third storey above the recently-opened emergency department.
Hutchinson Builders construction manager Nick Linnan said more than 300 workers would be involved in the project from start to finish, which is anticipated to be before Christmas.
“Ninety per cent of them are going to be local. It’s great to know we can deliver these sorts of projects with local people,” he said.
“We did do the original ED, we also did the theatre upgrade in 2017, so we’ve got an extensive portfolio of health projects, plenty of them are local.
“We’ve really got a passion for health, so any time we get a chance to do one we’re happy to do so.”
Mr Linnan said the crane, which will be installed in the coming days, is even taller than the one erected to complete a unit block in the Toowoomba CBD recently.
“It’ll be about 35m high and the radius of it will be 55m, so it will be quite a large crane, but it will have no impact on the community or the operations of the hospital,” he said.
“It’ll be bigger than the Mylne St crane, purely because of the size of the slew of the crane, it’s got to go up and be engineered accordingly.
“The first step (after the crane is installed) will be the structure, so we’ll do a bunch of blockwork around some of the walls and we’ll start with some structural steel after that.
“Once we’ve done the main structure, we’ll put the roof on and start our fit-out.”
The extension featured financial contributions from philanthropist Clive Berghofer.
A spokeswoman for St Vincent’s told News Corp in September the new ICU would be a major boost to health services in Toowoomba.
“Our ICU is an integral part of our hospital and Toowoomba’s healthcare landscape with 1200 patients receiving intensive care every year,” she said.
“The current ICU bed capacity stands at six — the new ICU will expand capacity to eight beds, with further room available to commission up to ten beds.”
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