Construction resumes on pharmacy building, accident investigation continues
 A support system holding up a section of the fourth floor of an eventual eight-story UW–Madison Rennebohm Pharmacy Building collapsed Wednesday morning. The accident, which injured ten workers, occurred while concrete was being poured for the fourth floor.
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Updated 2 p.m., June 11
Safety officials continued to comb through debris on Friday for clues to what triggered the collapse at the UW–Madison Rennebohm Pharmacy Building construction site.
Bill King, the state’s chief architect with the Division of Facilities Development, said a good deal of debris remains at the site. Officials from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration need to take a deliberate approach to clearing the wreckage, he said.
It may be later next week “before there is anything substantive to say” about the incident, he added.
Construction work resumed Thursday in areas away from the damaged third and fourth floors of the building.
Part of the support system for the fourth floor of what will be an eight-story building collapsed around 8:15 a.m. Wednesday.
Ten employees from Kraemer Brothers construction were injured and treated at UW Hospital, located across the street from the construction site. As of 2 p.m. Friday, Todd Dobbs was listed in good condition with a broken leg, and Terry Staskal was listed in fair condition with leg and foot injuries. Staskal was trapped under the rubble for about three hours before rescue workers from the Madison Fire Department and Kraemer employees freed him. The other injured workers have been treated and released.
Bruce Braun, UW–Madison’s assistant vice chancellor for Facilities Planning and Management, said the accident occurred when concrete was being poured for the fourth floor of the building. A portion collapsed onto the third story below.
Officials are still not sure why the support system for the portion of the floor apparently gave way. Norm Kraemer, chief executive officer of Kraemer Brothers, told reporters at a Wednesday press conference that his company will begin investigating the cause. Officials from the DFD and OSHA are also investigating the accident.
“We’re being careful about keeping people away from the area where the dismantling is taking place,” King said. OSHA crews are carefully dismantling the rubble in hopes of piecing together a detailed picture of what happened.
Also on the scene Thursday were insurance representatives and officials from Symons, the Bloomington, Minn.-based firm that designed and supplied the forming system used in the concrete pouring process, King said.
King extended gratitude to all of the emergency response and medical crews who responded to the crisis Wednesday. “The selfless efforts and cooperation of everyone was absolutely amazing,” he said.
King said there is also relief the failure caused no further damage to the floors below. Similar failures elsewhere in the country have triggered domino effects where lower floors have also given way. “All of us feel like this is a contained and very unusual incident,” he said.
The following fact sheet provides background information on the pharmacy building project.
Background on UW–Madison Pharmacy building project
The $46.9 million construction project for the new UW–Madison Rennebohm Pharmacy Building began in September 1998 and has an expected completion date of early fall, 2000. The following is some current information about the building project:
- General contractor for the project is Kraemer Bros. Construction of Plain Wis. Subcontractors include: Downey Inc. of Milwaukee, heating, ventilation and air conditioning; Hooper Construction of Madison, plumbing; Westphal Electric of Janesville, electrical; and United States Fire Protection Wisconsin, of New Berlin, fire protection services.
- The current status of the project is less than 30 percent complete. Crews are currently pouring concrete for the fourth floor of the eight-story research tower of the building.
- Total size of the building, which will be home to both instruction and research for the school, will be 205,000 gross square feet, and 120,000 assignable square feet. More than 55,000 square feet will be devoted to instructional and administrative space.
- It will house the school’s 15 academic departments, research centers and service offices. Special features of the building will include nearly 30,000 square feet of flexible-use laboratories with more than 200 individual work stations. It will also include an animal facility, the Pharmacy Library and extension and general practice divisions.
- The project is administered by the Wisconsin Division of Facilities Development. Project Manager is Russell Van Gilder.
- The project is funded by an innovative state program known as HealthStar, a partnership between the state and UW–Madison to help advance the university’s world-class medical research and services. Other HealthStar projects include the Health Sciences Learning Center and the Interdisciplinary Research Complex.
- HealthStar matches state funding with private university fundraising to help pay for large-scale construction projects. The School of Pharmacy exceeded its $15 million fund-raising goal for the project in 1998.
- The building is named after Oscar Rennebohm, a former Wisconsin Governor and founder of Rennebohm Drug Stores, Inc. of Madison.
- The new building will replace the old school at Chamberlain Hall, 1150 University Ave., which had deteriorated and was no longer large enough to house the school. The UW–Madison School of Pharmacy is more than 115 years old.
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