FORT CARSON, Colo.---The Soldier Family Care Center, Fort Carson's newest major medical facility is steadily progressing to an autumn opening date.

The Medical Department Activity broke ground on the three-story, 153,000 square foot SFCC Oct. 31, 2008, and the building's construction has been readily apparent to all Evans Army Community Hospital visitors.

According to Vincent Visuth, training coordinator and deputy transition officer with the Army's Health Facilities Planning Agency, the $54 million building is a Base Realignment and Closure enabler project and Grow The Army initiative. HFPA is working with the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, Omaha District, and primary contractor Kiewit Building Group to plan and construct the building to meet the space and requirements of its future users.

The "design build" structure will have enclosed corridors leading to Evans Hospital and is now more than 80-percent complete. The SFCC will house the following clinics, departments and services: orthopedics, podiatry, chiropractic, occupational therapy, physical therapy, family medicine, the Department of Primary Care, pediatrics, a laboratory annex, pharmacy, Social Work Services, patient administration and a dental clinic.

Architects and designers want the building to be environmentally friendly and are striving to attain a silver level of certification from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building certification program. According to the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED-certified buildings often provide healthier environments. This also contributes to improved health and comfort for visitors and higher employee productivity.

"They are using a lot of natural light which is the direction of healthcare design, it makes it so patients don't feel so enclosed," said Visuth.

"This building is going in a more modern direction, toward patient-centric care; patient satisfaction is very important so they want to make sure the aesthetics appeal to the patients."

The clinics will start moving from the hospital to the SFCC in August.

"We're going to cascade them over and clinics will open at different times, but we expect all will be fully operational by the beginning of October," Visuth said.

HFPA Transition Officer Jeff Storch said, "Our goal is to employ a systematic manner to minimize the downtime and minimize the disruption to patients' access to care."

Visuth added that everyone in the hospital is active and working well in planning and preparing for their moves.

"They've been very helpful and involved in getting the building on line, on time," he said.

No building project is without its challenges. Visuth noted the construction's impact on parking and coordination of this project with all the other projects going on at the same time in the hospital: the hospital alteration project, radiology, a sustainability and repair maintenance project in the laboratory, the Nutrition Care Department renovation, and a new Women's Health unit and Magnetic Resonance Imaging area.

"With all these construction projects we are lacking space to put people during all this transition," he said.

Storch added that in addition to these challenges, the coordination and planning required for utilities connections and connecting the SFCC to a planned, adjacent hospital administration building. The SFCC "addition" will sit just south of the SFCC, and that 18-month construction project will begin this summer.

There are scores of people involved in a project of this magnitude, but Visuth was quick to credit HFPA construction project manager John Bristow and lead coordinator and program manager Maj. David J. Zajac for their leadership and dedication to this project. He also complemented the contractor, Kiewit Building Group, for doing a "great job" in identifying needs and working cooperatively to complete the building on time and in the way the hospital needs and wants it.

"I think the SFCC is going in the right direction, providing services for Soldiers. The hospital was built in 1986 and the way health care has gone, the infrastructure needed to be updated," said Visuth. "The new SFCC is more forward in technology and space; it will help make sure Soldiers and their Families are well taken care of."