Mission North Tower in Asheville Recognized by ENR as Best Healthcare Project Nationwide

Engineering News-Record (ENR) recently named Mission North Tower in Asheville the Best Healthcare Project nationwide. The project was previously recognized as the Best Healthcare Project in the Southeast and has now been recognized as one of the twenty best projects nationally. ENR stated, “The 12-story, 615,000-sq-ft concrete surgical tower is Asheville’s largest-ever construction project, providing more than 200 acute and intensive-care rooms, a 79-bay emergency department, and 10 operating suites.”

McGill is honored to be a part of the team who completed this ambitious project that now defines the Mission Hospital campus. We worked as the civil engineering firm amongst the team of HDR (lead design firm), Brasfield & Gorrie Construction (general contractor), and Walter P Moore (structural engineering firm). As the largest employer in Asheville (6,900 employees) and the region’s only Level II Trauma Center, this project required the highest level of ingenuity, teamwork, precision, and integrity.

In general, the project is a large, complex integration of existing facilities with a new multistory bed tower created to consolidate the patient experience into one central area. Designs focused on multiple new accesses from existing streets, grading, water, sewer, complex construction phasing, pedestrian access and safety, ambulance access, materials handling, and community acceptance.

“It was a real honor to be a part of this project that is so important for Asheville and all of Western North Carolina. It was both a challenging and gratifying project comprised of a top-notch team. McGill takes pride in all of our projects, including this one, but being named Best Healthcare Project by ENR shows we aren’t the only ones proud of it.” – Ben Cathey, McGill Civil / Site Practice Area Lead