Article from the Rush University Facilty Upgrades page:
What was once a massive hole in the ground at the northwest corner of Ashland Avenue and Harrison Street is now beginning to resemble an actual structure…a structure that will become Rush's new hospital facility, the East Tower. The 14-floor, 806,000-square-foot building is the centerpiece of the Rush Transformation and is scheduled for completion in 2012.
Back in January, two massive cranes arrived at the site to begin erecting the East Tower's steel structure and placing materials on the upper levels of the building. Expected to take a little more than a year to complete, this phase should be finished in February 2010. The cranes currently stand at 222 feet and are attached to the base of the building. However, over the next week and a half, the cranes will jump to 287 feet, which is the highest they'll jump during construction. A freestanding crane not tied into a building can go as high as 300 feet.
Because of the safety issues involved with crane operation, city officials come out once a week to inspect each crane. The crane operators are licensed by the city and have undergone special training in order to operate the machines. Every day, the operators climb a ladder to the cab with a safety cage protecting them on the way up. On their way up, there are many landings with safety railings for them to stop and rest upon. They never climb more than 15 feet or so in one shot. If the weather is bad, which usually means high winds or stormy conditions, the operators are not allowed to go up.
According to John Heinrich, the project coordinator with Power Jacobs, once the cranes are finished, construction will move to the interior with the installation of windows and other facets of the building's enclosure. "Construction on the East Tower is really beginning to take shape - the progress can be seen every day, which makes this phase very exciting," says Heinrich.
For more information on the Rush Transformation log on to
www.rush.edu/transformation.