UAB Medicine Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility Tops Out

The topping out of University of Alabama at Birmingham Medicine’s Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility was recently celebrated to signify the new downtown Birmingham building has reached its tallest point. The 11-story rehabilitation facility broke ground in May of 2022, and is expected to be completed by early 2025. Hoar Construction is the general contractor.

Spanning 346,000 square feet, the new facility is located in close proximity to UAB’s existing Spain Rehabilitation Center. Once completed, the facility will include seven floors of hospital space atop four floors of parking deck. The building will connect to an existing pedestrian walkway and feature 136 patient beds and two levels of administration, conferencing and mechanical space.

Hoar’s team continues to work on an active site in a dense urban environment, with major hospitals nearby including Children’s of Alabama. To ensure complete safety of staff and pedestrians and that the project remains on schedule, the project team is implementing strict communication and coordination policies so that materials can be delivered without disruption to nearby traffic or the construction timeline. Building Information Modeling was also implemented in the preplanning phase.

“At one point, there were five total tower cranes within a three-block radius of our construction site, making for quite the busy work environment,” said Hoar Senior Superintendent Mike Broadaway.

Additional project partners include Gresham Smith as the architect. SSOE Group is overseeing mechanical, plumbing and electrical engineering, while MBA Engineers is the structural engineer partner and BHATE Geosciences as the geotech engineer.