Photo by Deb Gau Kevin Schroeder, facilities director at Avera Marshall Medical Center, shows some of the oldest blueprints available for the hospital facilities on Bruce Street. Schroeder will be retiring this week after a 40-year career in hospital facilities maintenance.

MARSHALL — When Kevin Schroeder started working at Marshall’s hospital as an electrician, he had no idea it would turn into a 40-year career. The time feels like it moved fast, Schroeder said.

“It seems like yesterday, I gotta be honest,” he said.

During his time as the hospital’s facilities director, Schroeder worked on a long list of building projects, from nursing home expansions to construction of the Avera Cancer Institute Marshall. Now, he will be retiring at the end of this week.

Schroeder started working at what was then Weiner Memorial Medical Center in 1985. However, his history with Marshall’s hospital goes back even farther — he was born there, he said.

“My office is the room that my mom was at when I was born,” Schroeder said. “When we remodeled that area, I had to bring my mom up and show her. And she goes ‘Yep, that’s exactly it.'”

As an adult, Schroeder returned to the hospital to work.

“I worked for Coleman Electric, which my dad and Jim Meulebroeck owned,” Schroeder said. When Schroeder’s father was retiring from the electric business, Schroeder learned that the hospital was advertising for an electrician. “That’s what I applied for.”

“At that time, it was a full electric campus. We didn’t have any gas, the big boiler was electric,” he said. “At one time, electricity was cheaper than gas was, in the late ’70s and ’80s.”

Although at first he thought he’d be working in the electrician position a short time, Schroeder later went on to become a maintenance lead at the hospital, and then the director of facilities.

There’s a lot that’s changed at the hospital — now Avera Marshall Medical Center — over the past 40 years. Schroeder said it seemed like the hospital campus has been under construction ever since around 1997, as they kept up with changes in health care.

“When I started, I’d have never dreamt we’d have a cancer center,” Schroeder said.

Construction of the Avera Cancer Institute Marshall was completed in 2015, after a major community fundraising campaign and lots of specialized building and equipment installation. The cancer center had to be built with a vault to accommodate a linear accelerator — a machine that provides a powerful beam of X-rays for radiation therapy.

“It’s hard to believe that the walls are up to six feet thick of concrete,” Schroeder said.

He also remembered using an app to track the shipping progress of the linear accelerator from Belgium to Minnesota. “It sat for months in customs when it came,” he said.

Some projects, like renovations of the hospital’s Emergency Department and surgical unit, were challenging because the hospital still needed to be able to serve patients while construction was going on.

“That one for surgery was probably the most challenging,” he said.

The surgical unit project, which was completed in 2011, included four operating rooms. The renovations had to be done in such a way that hospital operations wouldn’t be interrupted. Schroeder said he also had to monitor and make sure that the surgical unit wasn’t contaminated by construction.

Schroeder also remembered when the hospital added on to Morningside Heights Care Center facilities around 2005 to give all residents private rooms.

During renovations, they had to convert a dining room into temporary living space for residents.

“It was like a big dorm,” he said.

Technology and computer software have changed a lot of Schroeder’s work over time. Early in Schroeder’s career, maintenance workers had to physically pick up work requests from hospital staff.

“We used to go down and collect the papers at the end of the nurses’ desk,” he said. “They had a little box, and they had paper forms that they would write what their work orders were … So three times a day, somebody would go and pick up a little piece of paper.”

“Now, it’s all electronic,” Schroeder said.

Schroeder said he’s enjoyed getting to know contractors, and even doing the regulatory side of maintaining hospital facilities.

“To be honest, what I enjoy is the life safety aspect — safety codes, the layout of buildings,” he said.

Today, different parts of the Avera Marshall campus are built to help prevent fire from spreading, and have other features to help keep staff and patients safe.

Schroeder said he also enjoyed getting to work with the architects of different building projects at the hospital over the years.

“You learn a little more for every project,” he said.

Schroeder said one part of his job that he would miss was the interaction with people, including vendors and contractors, Avera Marshall staff, Marshall city emergency workers, and members of the public.

Schroeder said he wants to stay busy in retirement. He also plans to spend time with family.

“I have four grandsons who play hockey, so that’s gonna be our winter plans this year,” he said.