The addition to the South Road garage on the Worcester campus of UMass Medical School is progressing rapidly, one big section of concrete at a time.
The addition to the South Road garage on the Worcester campus of UMass Medical School is going up quickly. |
A total of 321 pieces of precast concrete, including walls, floors, staircases, beams and columns, will form the structure, placed one at a time like a giant Lego set.
For several weeks, construction teams have prepared the site, pouring foundation footings and relocating utility lines. That was followed by a steady stream of flatbed trucks that began arriving, 18 to 20 on a typical day, to deliver the precast concrete pieces.
The trucks roll up to the site, one at a time, in a planned sequence. A 190-foot crawler crane then lifts the precast piece off the truck, swings it around and lowers it to construction workers who weld and grout it into place.
“It’s a well-choreographed process, and so far, it’s been running smoothly,” said Shawn McGuiness, manager of design and construction at UMMS.
Placing all the concrete sections will take approximately six weeks. The expansion will add 335 parking spaces to the garage, bringing capacity to 1,840 spaces. During this phase, about 120 parking spaces in the existing portion of the garage are out of service. Most of those spaces will be available again by the end of December.
The South Road garage expansion is associated with the new medical building now under construction on campus that will house the VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System’s community-based outpatient clinic. The VA clinic will occupy the first two levels of the building and replace the VA’s Lincoln Street facility in Worcester. The clinic is expected to open in the fall of 2021.
