Hospital Construction in Fort Collins and Loveland
Eleven surgical suites, twelve intensive care beds and a Level III trauma designation sit inside a hospital at 1024 South Lemay Avenue that opened in 1925 as Larimer County Hospital. Every addition to a campus like that is built against the clock of an operating building: air pressures that must hold, water that cannot be interrupted and patients who cannot be moved around a construction zone. Hospital construction here is mostly a discipline of working carefully next to live care.
Two campuses define the regional market. Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins has 270 beds, and Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland has 187 private rooms and Level I trauma status, opened on February 14, 2007 as its sister hospital to relieve crowding. Both are operated by UCHealth, and the Health Service District of Northern Larimer County still owns the Fort Collins land and buildings and leases them to UCHealth. That is a useful reminder that the person who signs the contract and the people who live with the building are often different parties.
We do not treat a hospital as a bigger medical office. Infection control, medical gas, emergency power and the sequence of shutdowns shape the plan before the first drawing is priced, and our healthcare construction work begins with those constraints.
Two campuses, one health system and a public owner
The University of Colorado Hospital Authority, the UCHealth entity, is the second largest employer in Fort Collins with 5,900 employees, behind only Colorado State University at 8,850. That scale means capital plans for the system run across several years, with bed towers, surgical expansions, parking and outpatient pavilions released in phases. Medical Center of the Rockies offers neurosurgery, cardiac catheterization and open-heart surgery with a regional heart center and neurosciences center, and specialty programs like these drive requirements for equipment rooms, shielded imaging suites and hybrid operating rooms.
Owners and design teams planning near these campuses should expect the surrounding streets, utilities and parking to be part of the work. A new wing on a dense campus often means relocating a duct bank, expanding a central plant or building a garage first, and our parking structure and medical office experience support that enabling work.
Phasing around a building that never closes
Renovations in occupied hospitals are phased by department, by floor and sometimes by room. A typical plan opens a swing space, moves one unit into it, renovates the vacated space and then moves the next unit. The cost of each move, including relocating equipment and retraining staff, is a project cost that belongs in the budget from the start. We prepare a phasing diagram with the owner's clinical leaders so that no unit is without service longer than it has agreed.
Ground-up additions have their own problems. A tower going up beside a working hospital affects ambulance access, helicopter paths if a pad is present, delivery routes and noise. Temporary corridors, dust barriers and negative-pressure enclosures are built before demolition begins. Our phased construction on occupied sites approach treats those protections as permanent parts of the job, not as afterthoughts.
Infection control as a daily routine
An infection control risk assessment is written before work starts, and it determines the class of barrier, the air handling and the permit that the hospital's infection prevention team must sign. Hot work, ceiling access and any work above occupied spaces require a permit each day. Workers are trained on the specific rules for the unit they are entering, and walk-offs are done at the end of every shift to confirm that the barrier is intact.
Water systems are watched as closely as air. Flushing and testing plans, temporary shutdowns and the sequence for opening a new line are agreed with the hospital's facilities team ahead of time, and every shutdown has a written plan with a time limit. We pair the safety plan with a coordination meeting that includes the hospital's engineers, the fire marshal and our superintendents, so that nobody learns about an interruption from a call-light.
Codes, amendments and testing that come with a hospital
Fort Collins treats the 2024 International Building Code with local amendments as the current code for permits submitted on or after April 1, 2026, and keeps the 2021 codes available for reference until October 1, 2026, so the submittal date matters. The city requires commercial air leakage testing and provides a commissioning fact sheet and checklist with its 2024 code set, which fits the tests a hospital needs to pass in any case. Colorado HB22-1362 sets a floor for energy performance in any jurisdiction that updates its code, and hospitals, which run around the clock, feel it in every mechanical decision.
Health-care facilities also answer to separate licensing, fire and life-safety, and medical gas standards that are enforced by authorities other than the building department. We confirm the review path at the start, schedule the inspections that cannot be repeated casually, and keep records for each test. Our commissioning and closeout team assembles those records as the work proceeds.
Equipment that sets the calendar
The longest-lead items on a hospital project are often not the structure. Switchgear, emergency generators, air handling units, imaging equipment and elevators can each take many months to arrive, and the building around them has to be ready on the day they do. We release procurement as early as the design allows, and we track delivery dates against the schedule on a weekly basis. Our long-lead procurement process puts those dates on the master schedule from day one.
Commissioning is not a final step but a parallel track. Systems are tested as they come online, and an independent commissioning agent, if the owner has one, receives access while finishes are still going in. Owners who run several facilities, including healthcare systems, often ask us to keep a standard turnover binder format so that facilities staff can find what they need across campuses.
Start with the phasing plan
Tell us which departments must stay open and which equipment drives the schedule. We will return a phasing diagram, an infection control approach and a budget that includes the moves.
Questions Owners Ask
Can a hospital stay open during a major addition?
Yes, and most do. The approach combines physical separation (barriers, temporary corridors and dedicated construction entrances), controlled air pressure and a phasing plan that shifts one unit at a time. We write the plan with the hospital's clinical, facilities and infection prevention leaders before pricing, so that each move is accounted for.
How are shutdowns of power, water or medical gas handled?
Each interruption has a written plan, an approved time window and a rollback procedure. The hospital's facilities staff, our superintendent and the affected clinical unit sign off on the plan, and a backup source is ready before the primary is isolated. We avoid scheduling more than one critical shutdown at the same time.
What happens if the permit is submitted before or after April 1, 2026?
Fort Collins treats the 2024 International Building Code with local amendments as current for permits submitted on or after April 1, 2026, with the 2021 codes available for reference until October 1, 2026. A project that is near that boundary should confirm the applicable code with the building department before design is locked, because the energy and structural requirements can differ.
Who owns the land under a campus like Poudre Valley?
At Poudre Valley Hospital, the Health Service District of Northern Larimer County owns the land and buildings and leases them to UCHealth. For a contractor, this means that approvals and design reviews may involve both the operator and the owner, and we add time to the schedule for that coordination.
How early should we involve a contractor?
As early as the program is drafted. Hospital projects are decided by site logistics, phasing and equipment lead times as much as by the architecture, and a contractor in the room can price alternatives and test the schedule while changes are still inexpensive.