An Armonk-based construction company has been expanding its activities in the Hudson Valley while at the same time developing a specialty in creating health care facilities that occasionally involves the adaptive reuse of certain pieces of real estate.
The company is PTS Contracting, which was founded in 2010 by Phyllis Dellacamara, who also serves as its president. While initially handling construction projects in the fields of office, retail and industrial, PTS, for a decade, has been increasingly focused on the needs of health care providers, becoming a specialist in projects involving highly customized exterior and interior construction that meets strict requirements.
According to the company, during the course of a year, it may be handling multiple complex projects with up to 800 people on the job in communities throughout Westchester and the Hudson Valley. Some of the projects it has worked on involve converting spaces that had been used by retailers in shopping plazas into health care facilities.
In an adaptive reuse project completed last month for ProHEALTH Dental Yorktown, PTS converted a former bank in the Yorktown Green Shopping Center into a dental office complete with nine treatment rooms.
A $3.1 million renovation project for CareMount Endoscopy in Mount Kisco created an up-to-date 14,183-square-foot facility. Also in Mount Kisco, PTS in October of last year completed a $3.4 million renovation of a 6,709-square-foot fertility clinic for Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York.
Other typical projects include an obstetrics and gynecology facility for CareMount Medical OB/GYN in New Paltz, a renovated facility for the Premier Medical Group of Hudson Valley in Poughkeepsie, new offices and a therapy center for the Mental Health Association of Westchester in White Plains that is due to open next month and a new facility for Sun River Health that is due to open later this year in White Plains.
Zach Sawyer, vice president of construction operations for PTS, told the Business Journals, “We found that in health care, you have a slightly more sophisticated client because of the equipment coordination and everything that”™s required to build-out their spaces and you”™ve got a slightly higher level of quality of subcontractors and trade partners that do that work.”
Sawyer said that health care projects require the use of very high-end materials bearing in mind the need for end-users to maintain not only a high degree of cleanliness throughout, but also the sterility of some areas.
“All of the architects and the owners that we work with go through quite the design process to come up with the correct finishes that are going to be durable and long-lasting. In addition to that, there are some very high-end air quality and air filtration systems, especially post-Covid. You”™ve got redundancies in electrical, mechanical and plumbing systems. We”™re putting generators on sites. You”™ve got specialty equipment coordination for imaging equipment like MRI and CAT scans.”
Sawyer said that despite the added complexities and requirements of health care projects, PTS has a goal of keeping construction time within the parameters normally associated with jobs in other categories.
“You do sometimes see longer lead times and with the supply chain issues that everybody”™s involved in, you are seeing some longer durations,” Sawyer said. “We work with our trade partners and our trusted suppliers to do everything we can to come up with the right solution and make sure that the job stays to a normal schedule.”
Sawyer said that when estimating a job in health care, PTS works closely with equipment suppliers such as Philips Healthcare and Siemens Healthineers, along with medical product distributors such as Henry Schein Inc.
He said that although most construction companies do not specialize in health care construction, it is a competitive field.
“There are other folks that build spaces but most of those folks do not specialize, and that”™s what makes us unique,” Sawyer said. “Our focus is health care and life sciences. We”™re not focused on building outside of that realm.”
Sawyer said that he sees continued demand for health care spaces in Westchester and the Hudson Valley as reflected in moves by area hospitals to create new outpatient facilities.
“You”™re seeing a large trend in health care moving into former retail spaces. We”™re working on that adaptive reuse, renovating, repurposing and building modern spaces,” Sawyer said. “We”™re all the way up to Ulster. We just completed a project up there where we turned an existing storefront into medical office space. We”™re working all the way over to Sullivan and a little bit into Fairfield in Connecticut.”
