Tehachapi hospital: beautiful bones

Patients who come to the Tehachapi Replacement Critical Access Hospital for medical care probably won't ponder much about what is inside the walls and ceilings. Just as their own skeleton holds them together, a forest of connected steel studs forms the skeleton upon which all other systems are built.

The men responsible for the framing and interior and exterior finishes at the hospital are proud of their work.

"I've been doing steel studs since I was a kid," said Dave Rohder, foreman for the Brea-based Nevell Group, Inc. "My dad was a lather and a grandfather was a lather."

Rohder, who commutes from Redlands every day, has been on the Tehachapi job since May, 2014.

Field Foreman Gary Schultz goes home to St. George, Utah every weekend. He's been in the framing industry for 30 years, proudly wearing his Carpenter's Union Local 1506 (Los Angeles) safety vest. The other local, also Los Angeles, is 2361.

The Nevell company, co-owned by Michael Nevell and Bruce Pasqua, has had as many as 40 people working on the Tehachapi Hospital at one time. As of Sept. 24, there were 18. The company is responsible for interior and exterior finishes as well as the framing.

"You know how straight and even the walls of stone are?" Schultz asked Forde Files. "They can do that because we build what they put it on."

The interior steel studs are 16-gauge steel with a G-60 galvanized coating. The exterior studs have a G-90 galvanized coating.

"They don't rust. They last forever," Rohder said.

The studs come with holes for the cabling, wiring and pipes.

The framers create custom and radius work. That's where the field framing comes in – pieces are cut and shaped to fit exactly for soffits and fixtures and curved floors and walls. It's sculpture on a grand scale.

The challenge for the steel framers is to provide the space for all the lifelines that run throughout the hospital.

"The coordination is intense," Schultz said. "Who goes first? It's done in layers."

In the ceilings, drywall is installed halfway down the wall early in the process, otherwise it would be impossible for trades to install the other systems, which include pipes for hot and cold water, medical gasses, mechanical piping, duct work, electrical, fire sprinklers and data wires. The framers have to account for doors and windows, odd shapes, sound walls and fireproof spray.

In the 9 x 9-foot room where prisoners will be processed, a wire mesh will be placed in the walls to prevent anyone from kicking through the wall. The wire mesh was a compromise from more expensive adaptations.

In the back of the main building, a steel-framed canopy covers a walkway adjacent to where the CT-Scanner mobile unit will be parked. Most modern hospitals, Rohder said, use mobile CT-Scan units because the technology changes so rapidly, and the units can be replaced easily.

Rohder and Schultz work exclusively on hospitals, which require specialized construction knowledge to meet the strict states tandards. Rohder said that most of the hospitals he has worked on are multi-story, including Whittier Presbyterian, St. Judes in Fullerton and – his next job – a 16-story Loma Linda structure. The Tehachapi structure is unusual because it is on one level.

Tehachapi Valley Healthcare District CEO Eugene Suksi said the hospital is 60 percent complete. Final licensing, according to Project Manager Stacey Pray, will be during the 4th quarter of 2016. In her Sept. 15, 2015 report to the district board, Pray said the bond funds will be exhausted by February of 2016 – an extension of several months from the last report.