Work is well underway on the substructure for the patient care tower at the Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops.

Interior Health’s director of major capital projects David Fowler says about three-quarters of the concrete footings are now in place, and workers are pouring the first set of columns.

“The first few floors are quite complicated because we have a multi-level parkade within the building, so it takes a while for them to get up to the floors and start to repeat, in a sense. And that makes it easier to form and pour those upper floors.”

The nine-storey substructure is worth $34.6 million, and should be completely finished by August of next year.

Fowler says the project is modestly ahead of schedule.

“They should be far enough out of the ground by winter that it (cold weather) shouldn’t have too much of an impact. Unless there’s some really dramatic cold and windy days that might shut them down a little bit or force them to another side of the site. But certainly another winter like this past year would be very helpful.”

The entire patient care tower, worth $417 million, is expected to be open in the summer of 2022.