Skanska Closner, UP Health System And MiOSHA Discuss National Safety Week And New Marquette Hospital

(L-R): Victor Harrington, Steve Tighe, Darren Muljo and Gary Cooper

Marquette, MI – (Great Lakes Radio News) – Officials with UP Health System and the contracting firm of Skanska Closner joined the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration on the SUNNY Morning Show with Walt & Mike this morning to talk about National Safety Week and the latest with construction of the new hospital in Marquette.

Darren Muljo, Environmental Health and Safety Manager with Skanska Closner, began the conversation with an overview of the safety record of the hospital project. Muljo said it has approximately 300 workers on site every work day and has accumulated over 200,000 man-hours with no recordable injuries and no lost time due to injuries.

Gary Cooper, Senior Vice President of Operations with Skanska USA-Midwest Region, says the lack of injuries at the Marquette hospital work site is a result of Skanska’s safety programing for their workers, which includes their “Care For Life” program. He said the program creates an atmosphere and culture of everyone on site staying vigilant and being aware of the job at hand to prevent complacency, which in turn, can result in injuries.

Steve Tighe, Construction Safety Consultant at the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said his agency has partnered with Skanska Closner to endorse the company’s safety training and has found it to be effective in keeping injuries down. He added that the injury statistics at the Marquette hospital are better than the average statewide statistics for projects of a similar size. They tend to show an average of 3.4 injuries per 100 workers.

New Hospital for the Central U.P. – UPHS Marquette

Victor Harrington, Regional Director, Marketing and Business Development at UP Health System-Marquette, also talked about the project’s progress and said it’s on schedule so far with a topping out event when the final beam is placed at the building sometime in June. Harrington said the construction of the 265-bed hospital building, a 97,000-square-foot adjacent medical office building and parking structure is on track for completion by October of next year.

LISTEN IN – A discussion of National Safety Week and the construction of the new UP Health System-Marquette hospital with Darren Muljo, Gary Cooper, Victor Harrington and Steve Tighe.