MICHELLE WILLARD, Post Editor
Posted: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 10:38 am

Turner Universal Project Manager Andy Davis, Turner Vice Pres. Randy Keiser, MTMc Pres. Gordon Ferguson and MTMC Project Manager Jennifer Garland exchange the key to the new MTMC.

Two months early and under budget were the key words at the New MTMC key exchange ceremony Tuesday night.

The new hospital is slated to open its doors Oct. 2 as a 286-bed facility with additional unfinished space for more beds in anticipation of the county’s continued growth. The nearly 600,000 square feet of new construction includes 10 surgical suites, 32 intensive care beds and 30 obstetrical beds, as well as a state-of-the-art Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

“It’s been a long journey,” MTMC Pres. Gordon Ferguson said.

The new MTMC started as a pipedream in 1998 after bids came in to add a fifth floor to the C-tower at the old hospital. For a mere $50 million, the hospital could add 10 more beds, Ferguson said.

“It didn’t take us long to figure out that wouldn’t be a good idea,” he said, adding at this point he started working on building a new hospital.

Twelve years and $267 million later, the new hospital has become a reality. And now that it’s finished here’s what went into building it.

The new hospital’s campus at 68.5 acres is more than four times larger than MTMC’s current campus where the hospital was established in 1927.

The is made up of 4,000 steel beams, 450,000 utility-sized bricks, 2.3 million square feet of drywall, 11,000 light fixtures and 2,016 doors.

Construction took 2.8 million man-hours, which would have taken one person working 40 hours a week 1,346 years to finish.