Dive Brief:

• The Lee Memorial Health System in Fort Myers, FL, has awarded a Skanska USA-led joint venture the $200 million contract for an overhaul and an addition to the Gulf Coast Medical Center.
• Skanska holds an 89% share in the Gulf Coast Medical center joint venture with Florida-based Gates Construction, which makes Skanska's portion of the contract worth $178 million.
• The Skanska-Gates joint venture will build a 366,000-square-foot addition, renovate 48,000 square feet of existing space and build a 1,300-square-foot parking garage at the hospital, with the project scheduled for completion in February 2021.

Dive Insight:

In April, Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa, OK, also awarded Skanska a hospital renovation and addition contract, this one in the amount of $62 million. On that project, Skanska's scope of work includes the 130,000 square foot overhaul of St. Francis’ existing surgery suite of 28 operating rooms and a 15,000-square-foot surgery addition. The project also includes the construction of a 27,000-square-foot "mechanical penthouse" on top of the current surgery wing. 

In CMD Group's Q2 forecast report in May, the construction data information company predicted that medical facility construction, along with office buildings and transportation facilities, would drive construction starts, boosting nonresidential by 6.4%.

Skanska recently kicked off construction on the new $4 billion terminal at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, a deal the company called its biggest project to date. The Skanska-led joint venture, LaGuardia Gateway Partners, through a public-private partnership (P3) with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, will build the 1.3 million-square foot, 35-gate Terminal B and deliver the new facility by 2021. At the terminal's groundbreaking, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo suggested that Vice President Joe Biden, also at the ceremony, had spurred the new terminal project along by comparing the current terminal to something in a third-world country.