Porter Health System CEO John Nalli today announced the winning bidders for the first phase of construction on Porter’s new hospital at the intersection of U.S. Highway 6 and State Route 49 in Porter County.

Birmingham, Ala.-based health care construction specialists Robins & Morton Construction was named general contractor on the $225 million project. Initial site work, currently underway in advance of a planned July 21 groundbreaking ceremony, is being done by Dyer-based Dyer Construction.

Steel fabrication will be handled by Cives Steel (Wolcott), who in turn will employ Merrillville-based Chicago Decking Erectors for steel erection work.

The contract for the foundation and piers drilling and pouring was awarded to a St. Louis company, Subsurface Constructors. Other concrete work will be carried out by the Scurto Cement Company (Gilbert, Ill.).

Electricity and gas, water, and sewer services will be provided by NIPSCO, Indiana American Water, and the Damon Run Conservancy, respectively.

Nalli said a pre-bid meeting on the build-out portion of the project will be held in August. That work is scheduled to begin in late 2010 or early in 2011, depending on weather. The hospital is targeted for completion in 2012. Over that two-year period, the site will employ about 600 construction workers with a total payroll of $60 million to $65 million.

When finished, the new 430,000-square-foot Porter Hospital will sit on a 104-acre campus which will include a separate but attached Medical Office Building. It will have 225 private rooms, 32 intensive care beds and 39 rooms dedicated to outpatient treatment and recovery. The building could also be expanded if necessary, Nalli said, by adding two more floors, which would increase private rooms by 120 and double intensive care beds.

Nalli said that Porter plans to sell its existing 70-year-old, 250,000-square-foot facility in Valparaiso. However, it will build a new, 25,000-square-foot facility in the city to provide emergency and diagnostic services, after completing the new hospital. Nalli declined to discuss where in the city this facility would be built.