Home Improvement meets E.R. The ambulances and the I-beams
keep on coming By BILL FALLON
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.
