ANN ARBOR - The structural steel's up at the massive C.S. Mott Children's and Women's Hospital Replacement Project, but it's only the first major milestone that can be marked as "finished" in the process of completing one of the largest construction projects in Michigan.

The 13-month-long operation of installing 13,000 tons of structural steel on 13 levels "was a great job for us," said Garth Gruno, general foreman for the project's steel erector, Midwest Steel. "Aside from a couple scratches, we had a flawless safety record. You couldn't ask for a better group of guys."

With the university on holiday hiatus, a brief topping out ceremony was held Dec. 30.

A similarly good assessment about the iron work and the overall project came from Operations Manager Gary Simmons of construction manager Barton-Malow. "We're right on schedule, right where we want to be," he said. "Our subcontractors and the trades are doing extremely well."

The hospital has a price tag of $754 million. Simmons said there are currently about 160 Hardhats on the job, which should increase to about 550 at peak employment.

The 1.1 million square-foot facility will span the length of two football fields. It consists of two conjoined towers - a nine-story clinic tower and a 12-story tower devoted to inpatient care. Patient growth has prompted the expansion: A total of 3,845 babies were born in the U-M Women's Hospital birthing center in fiscal year 2007, compared with about 800 in 1969.

According to the U-M Health Systems, the existing C.S. Mott Children's Hospital (built in 1969) and the University of Michigan's Women's Hospital (1950) are being supplanted by "a new and larger home for specialty services for newborns, children and pregnant women," - not offered anywhere else in Michigan. Also included are: a pediatric liver transplant program; a Level I pediatric trauma program; a pediatric and adolescent home ventilator program; the Craniofacial Anomalies Program; high-risk pregnancy services and specialty gynecological services.

Construction will enhance inpatient and outpatient services within the current Mott Hospital, the Michigan Congenital Heart Center, the Birth Center and the Holden Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

The facility also will be home to numerous pediatric specialty clinics within the U-M Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases as well as Psychology, Autism and Orthopaedics. There will be an area for both adult and pediatric bone marrow transplant patients. A helipad on top of the 12-story tower will include an elevator with direct access to the pediatric emergency center.

When the project is complete in the fall of 2012, the existing facility will be used to benefit the entire health U-M system. The space will be used for additional faculty offices, clinic facilities and family space.

"The next four years are going to bring dust and noise and a small bit of chaos to this corner of our campus," said U-M President Mary Sue Coleman at the project's groundbreaking. "But we need to look past the construction cranes and yellow tape that is coming and see what is really unfolding - and that is the future. The new Mott Children's Hospital and Women's Hospital will be a source of hope and a place of healing."

The yellow tape, noise and the two tower cranes aren't going away anytime soon, although more of Midwest Steel's iron worker staff will be in the next few weeks. Gruno led the steel erection portion of the job along with Midwest Steel Project Manager Jason Moss, Sr. Project Manager Jeff Curley and Superintendent Mike LeBlanc. "We will button things up here and there, and mostly be done in a couple of months," Gruno said.

The trickiest part of the job, Gruno said, was putting up a 150-foot clear-span truss over the building's loading dock, supporting the second, third and fourth floors. "There were a lot of intricate areas in the building," he said.

Simmons said the biggest challenge so far has been getting materials into the site - especially structural steel - at the right time in the right order. "It's an extremely tight site," he said. "With a lot of materials, we're working just in time, so it has to come off the truck and into the building. Sequencing is very important."

One of the now-completed goals was to get the building topped-out before the end of 2008. "We did that," Simmons said. "That one of a lot of good things going on around here this year."

THE FIRST OF THE FINAL TWO IRON beams is lowered into place on Dec. 30 during the topping out of the C.S. Mott Children's and Women's Hospital Replacement Project on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor. About 13,000 tons of steel went into the hospital's two towers, in an effort led by Midwest Steel. Constructed on land that had been a parking lot, the new hospital building is one of the biggest construction project currently going on in Michigan.

WORKING WITH CONDUIT at the Mott Hospital project are Matt Kalmbach and Brad Seager of IBEW Local 252 and Shaw Electric.

THE REMAINING CREW of Iron Workers Local 25 members at the C.S. Mott Hospital Replacement Project stand in front of the two beams used in the topping out.