Turner Wins National Award for NGH COVID-19 Unit

Turner Construction Company recently announced work on the Nashville General Hospital COVID-19 Acute Care Unit project has earned the company a national Excellence in Construction^® Eagle Award. The EIC awards program is the industry's leading competition that honors both general and specialty contractors for world-class, safe and innovative construction projects.

"This project was a major accomplishment for Turner Nashville," said Kevin Williams, business manager for the Nashville office. "Finishing in just 27 days, the project team deserves a huge congrats for their hard work and commitment to helping the community. We are grateful to ABC for the recognition."

Nashville General Hospital's COVID-19 Acute Care Unit included preconstruction and construction services for a 24,000-square-foot, fast-track renovation of two floors of the existing hospital. On the eighth floor, demolition of 15,000 square feet made way for 40 new beds in three-walled rooms, each with negative-pressure air space to reduce airborne transmission of the virus. Turner finished this job, which should have taken at least six months, in just 27 days - the fastest project in business unit history - by organizing 24/7 work.

The national EIC award honors all construction team members, including the contractor, owner, architect and engineer. The winning projects, selected from entries across the nation, were judged on complexity, attractiveness, unique challenges overcome, completion time, workmanship, innovation, safety and cost.

Gresham Smith CEO Stepping Down

L-R: Al Pramuk, Rodney Chester

Al Pramuk recently announced he will step down from his CEO role at Gresham Smith at the end of this year.

Pramuk has served as chairman of Gresham Smith's board of directors since 2016 and as CEO since 2017. Responsible for aligning the firm's leadership to execute Gresham Smith's overall strategy, Pramuk is also active in the community, serving on the boards of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and Nashville Downtown Partnership. A licensed professional engineer, he earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and a Master of Engineering in Civil Engineering degree from the University of Texas.

COO Rodney Chester will step into the CEO position at the beginning of 2022. Pramuk will continue in his role as chairman.

Montecito Medical, SwitchPoint Launch Scout Intel

Nashville-based Montecito Medical Real Estate and SwitchPoint Ventures have collaborated to develop and launch Scout Intel, a next-generation, customized decision support engine focused initially on market identification, business expansion and site selection decisions. The continually evolving platform is designed to serve organizations of all sizes across healthcare and other industries.

Scout Intel aggregates and synthesizes large volumes of complex information, then incorporates each client's unique, experience-driven insights and intuition into a powerful engine fueled by artificial intelligence and machine learning. As a result, organizations can see data patterns and connections in new ways, then use this information to make informed decisions.

"When people hear the term 'artificial intelligence,' they mistakenly think it involves outsourcing business decisions to a supercomputer," said Ray Guzman, CEO of SwitchPoint Ventures. "By contrast, Scout Intel puts the emphasis on clients' intuition and experience, and then amplifies their intuition by introducing thousands of variables. The newly revealed opportunities are not only numerous but also highly relevant and unique to the client."

Scout Intel originated from Montecito's goal to scale its decision-making process in evaluating medical office properties around the country. "Fifteen years ago, we acquired a company that provided research related to analyzing the viability of medical markets," said Chip Conk, CEO of Montecito. "We invested millions in enhancing this proprietary medical research and analytics system, which ultimately helped us become one of the largest privately held acquirers of medical office real estate. We wanted to take our analytical capabilities several levels higher. That's what led us to work with SwitchPoint, a technology leader with a reputation for excellence in partnering with businesses."

RTG Providing Property Management for West Tennessee Healthcare

Nashville Office to Oversee Operations

Continuing an existing relationship with West Tennessee Healthcare, Knoxville-headquartered Realty Trust Group (RTG) has expanded its scope of services to the not-for-profit healthcare system to include property management and property accounting for its 1.2 million-square-foot real estate portfolio of nearly 100 non-hospital facilities, including medical office buildings, clinics, and administrative buildings.

"We are very appreciative of our continued relationship with West Tennessee Healthcare and its leadership team's continued trust in RTG to manage their growing real estate portfolio," said RTG Executive Vice President Chad Simpson.

RTG's Nashville office will oversee the day-to-day property management operations with additional support from RTG's corporate services team providing property accounting services for the portfolio. RTG will also continue to provide ongoing lease administration, transaction support, project management, advisory and special projects support services across the portfolio.