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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 WWW.HEALTHCARENEWS.COM 19
REAL ESTATE & CONSTRUCTION
Building Momentum
Healthcare Construction Is Picking Up, but Questions Remain
BRy GEORGE O’BRIEN
yan Pelletier says that, while it
was “scary at times,” he believes
life has returned to something approaching normal — although ‘normal’ is certainly a relative term — when it comes to construction within the broad and all- important healthcare sector in Western Mass.
And he should know. He’s project man- ager for Houle Construction in Ludlow, a family-run operation (his father, Tim, is president) that does the bulk of its work within the healthcare sector, including projects for most area hospitals and a num- ber of private practices as well.
He told HCN that things were busy just after COVID-19 arrived in the 413 almost exactly a year ago, as a number of hospitals and other providers needed some retrofit- ting of sorts and other types of work to do battle with the pandemic, but then, things
got quiet in a hurry and stayed that way for a while, before starting to revert to some- thing akin to pre-pandemic conditions.
“We were very busy for a few weeks, and then ... it just died,” said Pelletier, referring to the early months of the pandemic, and noting that hospitals and private practices simply didn’t want more people on site than absolutely needed to be there. “But in the last several months, things have started to come back. There’s a comfort level
now — the hospitals and private practices are getting back to business as usual, or as usual as they can.”
But that word ‘scary’ was used in refer- ence to much more than the number of projects in the pipeline. Indeed, it also referred to everything from the daunting task of keeping employees — and everyone else on a job site — safe to the cost and availability of materials.
While their workload is like a typical year, Pat and Craig Sweitzer say, the way facilities are designed in the age of COVID-19 is not.