A healthcare campus never has an off season at all, and summer is the construction season for a school, so the sitework for both is planned around people who are still using the place. A district wants the concrete and utilities finished before the first bell. A hospital wants the same work done without a truck, a vibration or a dust cloud reaching an operating room. We build for owners with both constraints on the northern Front Range, and we plan each job around the people who will be inside while we work.
The scale of these owners is part of the local picture. Colorado State University had an all-time high fall 2025 enrollment of 34,412 students, including a first-year class of 5,376, and the city's 2024 financial report lists the university as the largest employer in Fort Collins with 8,850 employees, followed by the University of Colorado Hospital Authority at 5,900 and the Poudre R-1 School District at 4,600. Institutions that size are always renovating, adding and replacing something, and their grounds and utilities are never quite finished.
We work for school districts, hospital systems, university departments and the general contractors and construction managers who build their facilities. For a district's bond-funded building program or for a hospital expansion, we price foundations, slabs, utilities, parking and accessible routes with the owner's phasing in front of us, and we explain what each phase will cost in disruption as well as in dollars.
Access is the first decision. A school site has bus lanes, pickup zones and walking routes that cannot be blocked at the start or end of the day, and a hospital campus has emergency vehicle access that must stay clear around the clock. We draw the haul route on the site plan, mark where trucks queue so they do not idle near an air intake, and agree on delivery windows with the facilities director. Where a job borders a ward or a classroom, we use quieter methods near occupied walls and plan saw-cutting and breaking for hours that the owner chooses.
Vibration and dust are the other sensitive items. Compaction equipment near a sensitive imaging suite can be an issue, so we ask the owner's engineer about limits and monitor accordingly. Dust is controlled with water and covered loads, and we sweep adjoining roadways during concrete placement. Our ADA ramps and accessible routes work receives particular attention on these campuses, since slopes, landings and detectable warnings are inspected closely and used by everyone.
Poudre Valley Hospital at 1024 South Lemay Avenue has 270 beds, 11 surgical suites, 12 intensive care beds and a Level III trauma designation. It opened in 1925 as Larimer County Hospital, merged with the university hospital system in 2012, and sits on land and buildings still owned by the Health Service District of Northern Larimer County, which leases them to the operating system. In Loveland, Medical Center of the Rockies at 2500 Rocky Mountain Avenue has 187 private rooms and is a Level I trauma center. It opened on February 14, 2007 as the sister hospital to the Fort Collins campus, built to relieve crowding there.
For a contractor, those facts translate into two kinds of work. On established campuses like the Poudre Valley Hospital campus, projects are additions, parking, utility upgrades and central plant work threaded through existing buildings. At Medical Center of the Rockies and similar regional hospitals, growth projects are medical office buildings and parking next to a campus that already operates around the clock. Both reward a contractor who maps utilities before the first cut.
School work is seasonal. Foundations, utilities and paving that need a dry, warm window are scheduled between the last day of classes and the first day of the new year, which gives a window of a couple of months to pour, backfill and pave. We plan the underground in the first weeks, flatwork and paving last, and keep a standby crew to fix a failure before opening day. Contractors who commit to a school opening date should plan for weather and testing in the schedule, and we state the risks openly.
Hospitals have shutdown windows instead of seasons. A new water or sanitary tie-in may need a planned interruption in a specified hour, and a fire line connection may require notice to the fire marshal and the insurer. We pre-assemble what can be built ahead, stage materials at the connection and brief the facility's engineers before the cutover. Our goal is for the shutdown to be as short as the physics allows.
A healthcare owner will often require an infection control risk assessment before any work begins near occupied space. We follow the owner's plan: barriers, negative pressure where required, wet cutting, sealed debris containers and clean-up with HEPA vacuums where the owner specifies. Trucks are washed before leaving a dirty area, and the haul route is kept clear.
On school sites we fence the work, secure the gate at the end of each day, lock equipment and keep children away from the trench. Background checks, site badges and sign-in procedures are the owner's to set, and we comply. Underground work follows the same trench safety rules as elsewhere, with protective systems and a competent person for excavations deeper than five feet.
School and healthcare projects have their own typical building types. An education or school campus needs bus loops, parking, a gym slab with a precise finish, athletic flatwork and fire access lanes, along with utilities for the building and a stormwater plan that drains the field. A hospital needs a concrete structural frame or podium, equipment pads for the central plant, helipad slabs where the owner has one, and parking structures, with underground utilities that are redundant and carefully mapped.
Smaller outpatient and medical office buildings sit between the two: shallow foundations, tight parking and an owner who wants the schedule held. We also support municipal owners such as cities that build recreation centers and libraries; their approach is described under municipal and public works.
Healthcare and education buildings are held to higher inspection standards than ordinary commercial work. Special inspection of concrete, reinforcing and soil compaction is typically required, and the owner's testing agency may inspect the work separately from the city. Fort Collins treats the 2024 International Building Code with local amendments as current for permits submitted on or after April 1, 2026.
We keep the paperwork organized: mix design submittals, reinforcing mill certificates, cylinder break results and compaction reports, in the format the architect asks for. At closeout we provide a binder of test reports and as-built records so the owner has the quality documentation in one place.
Send the phasing plan, the opening date and the campus rules. We will return a schedule that shows each pour, each tie-in and each inspection, with weather margin written in.
Yes, with planning. We agree on placement times with the facility, pump concrete from a staged location to keep trucks off sensitive routes, control dust and noise, and avoid vibration-heavy activities during critical procedures. The owner's infection control team sets the barriers and cleaning requirements, and we follow them.
We map every task backward from the first day of class, with the underground and foundations first, then slab, then paving and flatwork. We keep a float of several days for weather and testing, and we agree with the district on a contingency such as a temporary walkway if paving is delayed.
Typically special inspection of footings, reinforcing and concrete placement, cylinder breaks, soil compaction testing and, on some projects, floor flatness and moisture testing. The testing agency is hired by the owner, and we give them access, notice and a clean work area. Results are shared with the superintendent the same day.
Both. A district with a bond program often hires a general contractor or construction manager, and we work as a subcontractor under that firm. Smaller jobs, such as parking lot reconstruction or a utility replacement, may be bid directly to us. We bid either way and keep the same quality standards.