Augusta - As construction continues on a new regional hospital in Augusta, a major milestone was reached Monday.

With almost 600 construction workers looking on, the final steel beam was hoisted to its final resting place, high atop the new 640,000 square foot regional medical center.

When work began, project managers like John Scott of H.P. Cummings and Robins & Morton thought it would take around 14 months to get to this point. This crew did it in exactly 10 months. "I think a lot goes back to the sub-contractors, and the contractors, and the owner, and the architects all getting together to get this job planned ahead of time," Scott said Monday. "The planning for this job is really extensive and it's shown in the construction."

The final beam bears the signatures of hospital staff, patients, donors, and construction workers. 89% of those workers are from Maine. "We made it a criteria for anyone who had to work on the job, they had to tell us how they were gonna use Maine contractors," Scott said.

After the new facility is finished, Maine General Medical Center's Thayer campus in Waterville will no longer have patients staying overnight, but it will still feature a 24 hour emergency care facility and outpatient services. "It's about 90 percent of what we do," said Scott Bullock, President & CEO Maine General Health. "Very rarely do people need to come into the hospital overnight. So Thayer will still be a major part of our activity"

John Milbrand, Construction Manager at Maine General Hospital, who's retiring after this project, was given the honor of placing the last beam. "Well it was really exciting," Milbrand said with a smile. "When the erecting foreman came up and said we can arrange for you to be up in the bucket and put the last bolt in, I jumped at the opportunity. It's quite an honor."

They hope to move in to the new hospital in December 2013, but given how quickly they've reached ths point, they're already rethinking that date. "We're hopeful we'll be able to move that date forward into November of 2013, so we're about 16 months away right now," Bullock said.

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