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Skanska USA Building this week started work at St. Charles Medical Center in Bend on a hybrid operating room that will be one of largest of its kind in the Pacific Northwest.

The project is complex in that it is being done on an existing footprint with operating rooms nearby, said John Williamson, senior project manager for Skanska, which has a regional office in Bend.

“We’re building in close proximity to in-use operating rooms,” he said. “There has to be complete separation from our environment and the operating rooms, which are very sterile.”

Merging high resolution imaging equipment into an operating room environment requires significant coordination, Williamson added.

The hybrid operating room is part of a $10 million project that includes $5 million in new imaging equipment, replacement of the existing angio lab and relocation of the outpatient catheterization lab to a new space next to the inpatient lab, said Karen Doolan, director of cardiovascular services for the St. Charles Health System.

“This really brings our technology up to state-of-the-art and gives us rooms that are the correct size and location to accommodate patient care,” Doolan said.

The new hybrid operating room is slated to be done in March. It will then function as a temporary angio lab until the remaining project pieces are completed by late spring.

A $13 million cancer center also is under construction at the Bend facility, and expected to be finished in July 2014, according to Jim Walker, director for construction and real estate for St. Charles. Portland-based Howard S. Wright is the general contractor for the cancer center project, Walker said.