Crowd looks on as Children’s Hospital is “topped off”
![Two construction workers work to secure a white beam, onto which an evergreen tree and American flag are mounted, atop a building.](https://pennstatehealthnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Topping_Off_NR.jpg)
For weeks, a pair of plain white steel beams have been collecting signatures of patients, staff, students, volunteers, donors and community members. On Oct. 24, the beams were hoisted into the air by a crane, then carefully lowered and guided into place atop Penn State Health Children’s Hospital.
The “topping off” ceremony marked the completion of the steel structure that will house the building’s three-floor expansion. The project, which is expected to be complete by 2020, amounts to a 126,000-square-foot addition.
It will provide space for a new labor and delivery unit and post-partum patient rooms, as well as a new neonatal intensive care unit — all of which will be moved from their current locations in the adult hospital. The addition also will include an 18-bed pediatric acute care unit.
Learn more about the project here.
A “topping off” ceremony is a long-standing tradition of construction workers, particularly steel workers, to commemorate the completion of a building‘s structure.
![Topping Off celebration](https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1903/30598948477_90d8ec216d.jpg)
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