Conducting a $50 million renovation in and around a fully functioning hospital is one thing. Doing it in the middle of Bronxville, where tulips, not litter, line the sidewalks, only adds to the equation.
“It”™s very difficult working in the middle of an emergency room,” said Keith Kallmeyer, project senior superintendent for the contractor, Bovis Lend Lease, with an office on Palmer Road in Bronxville. “I usually turn the other way when I see something messy. I”™m not that good with blood.”
Kollmeyer pointed to a locked green fence that circles the construction site: “And we have to respect where we are. This is a lovely town.”
The six-story scaffold visible along Pondfield Road West will become two new elevators, visible outside the building. But in the scheme of a project that began 18 months ago and is slated for completion in 2009, the elevators”™ first job will be to hoist material to the roof as part of the sixth-floor renovation. In conversation, a person notices the word “logistics” is a big part of Kallmeyer”™s workday vocabulary.
Kallmeyer said the project is proceeding “a little slower” than planned. On cue, one of the up-to-20-member crew had no electricity at an outside jack. Kallmeyer assessed the situation and said where a different electric source could be found. “All part of the day,” he said.
Labor foreman Charley Lewis confirmed Kallmeyer”™s take on working in the tight, active and immaculate environs of the hospital: “We sometimes say it”™s easier to build a skyscraper from the ground up than some of these renovations.”
The Bovis crew at Lawrence Hospital is trained for hospital work and is part of the firm”™s health-care division, Kallmeyer said.
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