Vision Northland building nearing completion
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With almost three years of construction all eyes have been on the construction of the 18 story Vision Northland building.
Project Executive Jeff Dzurik says, “This is a monumental project and for a long time was the largest construction project in the state of Minnesota.”
With an ambitious design and countless roadblocks CEO of Essentia Health, Dr.David Herman says, “The project is on time and on budget. And that took a lot of extra work for everyone involved with this project.”
Dzurik lays out the challenges the project faced, saying, “Just the physical geography of the site made it very challenging in addition to… you know navigating a project like this through the pandemic and even more so through the supply chain and escalation issues that happened post pandemic has probably been one of the hardest challenges.”
With over 2 million work hours put into the construction, Essentia focused on catering to both patients and staff in the new design.
For patients, their rooms will be on the outer edge of the building with a view of Duluth.
Essentia Health is set to take possession of the Vision Northland Building in February 2023.
Dr. Herman says, “We’ve done everything we can to bring the outside into the building here. We know the involvement of the family, being to see the outdoors, having a comfortable place in which to stay, makes a huge difference for their recovery and recuperation.”
The rooms are also bigger in size. One of the many requests of the staff, who had quite the input when Essentia was designing the hospital.
“Staff was involved from top to bottom as well as patients”, says Dr. Herman, “we asked them, you know, ‘where should things be on the head wall? Where should the garbage cans be?’ We talked to our environmental service people, ‘what makes it easier to keep a room cleaner?’”
Essentia will have possession of the building sometime around February 2023, but the building will be totally complete in the spring of 2023.