Building a ship in a bottle

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Construction in confined spaces is an art that takes skill, patience and lots of open communication.

It’s a phenomenon that has been occurring more frequently in the Greater Lehigh Valley over the last years as the construction industry has rebounded.

Businesses, health care institutions and other organizations are looking to expand at the same time as they remain fully operational. There’s no time window for them to shut down, so construction companies must learn to work in tight spaces, without disrupting daily activities of their clients.

“We try as much as possible to get the work done with as little disturbance,” said Chip McAteer, president and CEO of Constructure Management Inc., a Malvern company that completed several projects for St. Luke’s University Health Network’s Anderson Campus.

Perhaps Ed Flowerdew, project manager at Serfass Construction in North Whitehall Township, described it best, like “building a ship in a bottle.”

In October 2012, Serfass Construction began building an imaging center for Coordinated Health. The plan called for a new structure that would link Coordinated Health’s medical offices’ building with its hospital in Bethlehem Township, with both facilities continuing to operate with staff and patients just yards away.

“The biggest challenge is the confined space,” Flowerdew said. “We had a hurricane [Sandy] come through when we were doing the site work.”

In connecting the two buildings, the construction firm had to limit the impact on its client’s daily operations while keeping the area safe, while at the same time remaining on track to meet a completion schedule. The company finished the project in February 2013 after four months of work.

One of the difficulties faced by the contractors was that ambulances arrive via the north side of the site, in close proximity to where the new building was going up, so no construction vehicles or debris could be in the driveway.

“Keeping open lines of communication with the owner is critical,” Flowerdew said. “Being that it was a new building out of the ground, it was a little unique.”