Page 42 - BusinessWest March 3, 2021

Building Momentum
Healthcare Construction Is Picking Up, but Questions Remain
RBy 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 rela- tive term — when it comes to construction within the broad and all-important healthcare sector in Western Mass.
And he should know. He’s project manager 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 number of private practices as well.
He told BusinessWest 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 retrofitting 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 something akin to pre-pandemic conditions.
“We were very busy for a few weeks, and then ... it just died,” said Pelletier, referring to the early
“We’ve seen steel and lumber costs rise exponentially — they’ve almost doubled within the past year.”
months of the pandemic, and noting that hos- pitals 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 reference to much more than the number of projects in the pipeline. Indeed, it also referred to everything from the daunting task of keeping employees —
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.
and everyone else on a job site — safe to the cost and availability of materials.
And he was not alone in that assessment, especially when it comes to the price hikes.
“We’ve seen steel and lumber costs rise expo- nentially — they’ve almost doubled within the past year,” said Dan Bradbury, director of Sales and Marketing for South Hadley-based Associat- ed Builders, which works within a number of sec- tors, including healthcare. He noted that these rising costs could, and probably will, impact everything from decisions on whether projects move forward in the near term to what kind of construction takes place — new or renovation of existing space (more on all that later).
As for now and the immediate future, those we spoke with said that, after going mostly and then almost completely silent in the weeks after COVID hit, the phones are starting to ring again with greater regularity — in general, and within
the healthcare sector in particular.
Pat and Craig Sweitzer, co-owners of Monson-
based Swietzer Construction, which specializes in healthcare construction and especially dental offices, said they have a number of projects in progress and on the books, including three new dental offices, a medical building with a dental office as part of the lineup, two new medical spas (including one in East Longmeadow, adjacent
to an Ascent Dental office they built), a canna- bis dispensary, and work at Adaptas Solutions in Palmer, which is now making parts for COVID testing.
Noting how he needs to be at a number of dif- ferent sites on a weekly of not daily basis, Craig Sweitzer joked, “I need to buy an airplane.”
Those sentiments express just how much the market has rebounded — if that’s even the right word — and how the outlook has brightened since the darkest days of the pandemic.
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