Arctic construction masterpiece: Barrow Hospital: bright light on the tundra took decades-long planning to bring crucial new services.

• Author: Lavrakas, Dimitra
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Architects & Engineers

It was an interview typical of Alaska: a busy executive, skilled in subsistence methods, instructing two young hunters on how to cut up a reindeer. No, not a caribou, a reindeer, a remnant of the old herds. Its two skinned legs lay on the table, and next to them sat Marie Carroll, taking time to talk about the evolution of the new Samuel Simmonds Hospital from a need to reality.

"Where do I begin," says Carroll, president and CEO of the Arctic Slope Native Association (ASNA) and the Samuel Simmonds Hospital. "The preparation began in the late '80s, when some leaders from the villages and Barrow talked about having a new hospital. What we had was so small. It was the size of a clinic and served the entire North Slope. It was like a cubbyhole of people and then add patients to that--it was really tight."

The North Slope Borough has six villages and the city of Barrow, with populations ranging in size from a few hundred to Barrow's 4,400.

The old hospital was built in 1964, and was 2x4 construction.

"That's what we build our sheds with," Carroll says.

With funding based on its square footage, monetary support was limited, Carroll says.

"The population grew, but we didn't," she says. "So with a bigger building, we'll get more funding."

The new hospital is four times the size of the old one, and the staff is doubled.

The hospital was a competitively bid, joint venture project between UIC Construction, LLC, a subsidiary of Ukpeagvik Inupiat Corporation, Barrows Native village corporation, and SKW/Eskimos Inc., a subsidiary of the borough's Native regional corporation, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation. The $160 million hospital is a one hundred thousand square-foot, two-story, steel-framed building with a steel pile foundation and is fully sprinklered.

Delivery of material out of Seattle was handled by another UIC subsidiary, Bowhead Transport Co., LLC, and included multiple-year shipments of building materials from Seattle to the Barrow construction site.

The project is a leading example of how Native and village corporations' diversification leads to partnerships that win bids, employs locals, and improve the quality of life in the community.

Its namesake, Samuel Simmonds, was one of the founders of ASNA, a Presbyterian minister and ivory carver who specialized in carvings depicting daily life. He was also a reindeer herder early in his life and once recalled, "I rode about on a reindeer just like Santa Claus."

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