MMED Clinical Inpatient Tower Update
Thank you all for supporting our favorite University. Every alum, employee, student, and fan helps put food on my table, and better the world.
We are busting ass on this project, folks. Currently working 5-9's and an 8 on Saturday to keep up with the schedule. The footings and foundations on this project are impressive. While we are being safe, a 40ft single sided wall of concrete in one pour is pushing the limits of badassery. But still we are the best in the business and everything is going pretty smoothly.
I have worked on many UofM projects, including the Student Union, Angell Hall, Taubman Science Library, and the Brighton Hospital among many other smaller projects around campus. While many of us traveled to lansing to build the McLaren hospital for the past two years, we eagerly waited for this project to start. Alas!
If you would like to watch us work during the day you can here:
https://umaec.umich.edu/projects/major-projects/mmed-clinical-inpatient-tower/web-camera/
Below is a picture of my foreman and I upon the 40' wall. Near us, is another 30 ft tunnel. This building is awesome, guys. Hope we help many people recover in this building to cheer on our beloved Wolverines. Devastate Ohio State and Go Blue!
Very impressive. Keep up the good work (and stay safe).
Side note: You didn't run across Jimmy Hoffa in there did you?
Anybody remember what used to be on that site? I spent time at Couzens hall ~15 years ago and remember there being a building, but Google Maps shows it as a grassy field.
Wasn't it the original U of M hospital building?
really interesting to (literally) see your point of view. I'm a HCW (not at Mich Med) and have seen these medical buildings go up my whole life but never heard from the builders' perspective. I've seen a few buildings invite former patients (esp kids) spray paint messages or their names on the steel beams--eventually covered up but i'm sure a lot of fun for the kids to know their work is somewhere under the cladding.
Thanks for sharing - keep up the good work. Your pride for your work is admirable. Looking forward to seeing the finished product!
Don't forget to write the score from "the game" on the cement for reference of when the work was started.
It’s been more than 25 years since medical school. I don’t recognize that corner anymore!
Kresge was across from Couzens. Old Main was next building to the East. It was closed but still standing when I started.
Proud to say I have batched a lot of the concrete for this project, including what will be poured this morning! Keep up the great work guys, and stay safe!
I'd have recognized you and your foreman anywhere.
Thanks for the badassery, and the update.
@blue vet, agreed - I think they both played prominent roles in Squid Games by the looks of it
I take it the supply chain crisis for building materials is over, and you have everything you need?
Impressive. I wish they would build something so you wouldn’t have to wait on hold for an hour to make an appointment. Getting very frustrated with this health system. Great doctors but administratively poor and gets worse every year.
can't believe this thread has been up for 11 hrs and nobody has said to OP:
user name checks out.
sitting there with a framing hammer in his belt, tape measure, etc. has to be a framing square on the other side.
during the dig if you find dinosaur bones or some very old empty goebels bottles, please post a photo. one or more might have been mine from back in the day.
I was involved with the Michigan Union project from the University side of things. What parts of that project did you specifically work on? I'm curious if we had any interactions throughout that 18 month process.
Please tell me you're going to bury that excavator in the hole...
@XM - "...some very old empty goebels bottles..."
Holy hell... That was the beer of choice for my grandfather & family when I was a wee youngin'. Snap forward 30-some years, my brother brought a case to grandpa's funeral and we toasted the old man (WWII Pacific theater medic). Not a single one of us could finish that can of beer we each had. Lawdy! That stuff was awful!! Thanks for the memory of a by-gone era...
@vablue
goebels was $5.99/case at village corners pretty much all of my/our college years. it beat not having beer, admittedly, not by much.
That big hole in the picture you posted looks like the same pit where Michigan football buried OSU last year. Very impressive!
Replying to some of the comments:
No Hoffa and Thanks
Yes, most people write messages on projects. Every job I've been on in the past 2ish years has "Me and (partner's name) have survived Covid... So far." written somewhere on the building.
Let's Go Doan! Keep it up
The supply chain crises has seem to been alleviated. Michigan is really good at making anything with gypsum, but steel is an issue. These big projects get priority. At Mclaren, we were getting material almost directly from the manufacture. Money talks and those projects lose thousands by the day when they are behind schedule.
I was in and out of the Union project, GM Tech Center and St. Joes Hospitals for a couple years. Most of my career has been in interior systems with ACP, then we moved up north and decided to try concrete form work. I love every second of it. I am actually moving back downstate today, playing hooky to do so! As far as the Union project I helped put on the floor and wall protection in the beginning of the project, did some interior framing throughout the project and then some punch list/signage stuff at the end when Covid hit.
Username kind of checks out now. I've settled down a bit. I am a goofball, rebellious in nature, and a thorn in the side of management. Always poking and prodding for the betterment of the workers, and will go to bat for my brothers and sisters. Sometimes I am inappropriate, however I do think that there are only two true bastions of free speech left... Comedy clubs and Jobsites. (jest)
But now at 29 years old with a wife and two kids, my body already hurts every morning from running and gunning. So, maybe maturity and sweat equity will bring an opportunity for management, or career change. For now we grind, claw, hustle, take no shit and bust ass because it makes us money and places for you to work, learn and recover. We are all in this together.
Tip the the cap to are tradesman. My Father was a tradesman and great man!
"Badassery" hasn't really been in my vocabulary, but will be going forward.
Fellow carpenter here local 525 on west side of state. Been a carpenter for 36 years. Still love every minute of it. Nothing like starting out with a pile of lumber in the morning and having nothing left but a pile of sawdust at the end of the day or driving by a project you worked on 30 yrs ago.
GO BLUE
Ah Goebel's - AKA "Jeubelles" to sound absurdly fancy.
I spent many a summer day as a poor student at a friend's lake cottage in Indiana where we'd buy a case for $4.99, then bring the cans back to Michigan for $2.40 in returns.
I know, not kosher - but man, 10 cents a can was dirt cheap. Fond memories.