Blessing Health Center at 48th and Maine receives contractors’ award

QUINCY — Blessing Health System and Russell-HBD Construction of Davenport, Iowa, were recognized for the construction of the Blessing Health Center, 4800 Maine.

The Blessing Health Center finished in second place in the Mid America Class in the 2020 Keystone Awards competition, organized by the Associated General Contractors of America, for projects valued between $10 million and $30 million. The field for this award featured projects from 38 companies.

This competition celebrates contractors that complete high quality work within a given time frame, regardless of issues that may arise during the different phases of construction.

The Blessing Health Center is an 83,000 square foot state-of-the-art outpatient medical services facility on a seven-acre site. It blends trend-setting architecture with patient care services. Russell-HBD led the design over a nine-month process, providing routine pricing updates to ensure the design remained within the budget.

“Another major hurdle was the number of changes directed by (Blessing),” said Damion Dodd, director and construction
manager for Blessing Health System. “The project was ever-evolving, not a standard in our industry. It is common to have some changes, but we were moving complete departments around frequently, complicating construction and financial management.

“I admired how Russell-HBD stood with us to find a way to keep the cost of the change in alignment with the amount budgeted. This was one of many actions by Russell-HBD that demonstrated to Blessing the fact it did not hire a company to build its medical office building but found a partner to help reach its goal.”

Russell-HBD’s construction efforts included extensive site work, unique interior and exterior building finishes, hospital grade MEPF systems, technology integrated furniture and medical equipment. The new building has nine specialty patient care departments. The building also offers imaging services (MRI, CT and X-ray), a laboratory, retail space restaurant space and office space.