Parkland executive is an expert in building hospitals

DALLAS – In a career that has spanned nearly four decades, crossed multiple states and two continents, Lou Saksen has been instrumental in hospital construction projects that, when combined, total nearly 6.5 million square feet and with a value of more than $2 billion.

As Parkland Health & Hospital System’s Senior Vice President of New Parkland Construction, Saksen is a leading expert in overseeing major health care construction projects. The same could be said for his work on university campuses where he’s built projects totaling more than 9 million square feet and a cost of nearly $1.4 billion. 

Seeing buildings take shape as they rise from the earth and come online for thousands to use is something that brings a smile to Saksen’s face. 

“After all these years, I still love what I do. It’s a tremendous sense of pride when I see a finished building and I know what it took to get it completed,” he said.

From his early days of building architectural masterpieces from Lincoln Logs™ to the blueprints he completed for his father, Saksen has never shied away from all things construction. In his youth, he was notorious for buying things, tearing them apart, and putting them back together again. Items, he said, including motorcycles, watches – almost anything just to see how it worked.

Still, it was an academic medical center in Virginia where Saksen found his true calling.

“There is something about working with physicians, nurses and building a structure that works for patients, visitors and the medical team that I’m most comfortable with,” he said. “I’ve always loved doing this.”

And he’s had plenty of experience.

Since 1974, Saksen has been involved in major construction projects at Virginia Commonwealth University/Medical College of Virginia in Richmond; Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York; Stanford University Medical Center in Stanford, California; El Paso (Texas) Medical Center and El Paso Children’s Hospital and Children’s Medical Center Dallas. Along the way he’s also led the team that built a few parking decks, university dormitories, laboratories and even a 150-bed hospital in the Philippines.

“I’m not new to the rodeo,” he says with a laugh.

Maybe not, but this cowboy still puts on his boots and weekly – sometimes three or four times a week – walks the grounds of the 1.9 million square foot acute care hospital affectionately referred to as New Parkland Hospital. Staying on top of things, sometimes literally like when he’s on one of two helipads above the 17th floor, is what Saksen enjoys most.

That, and driving down a Dallas highway and seeing the New Parkland rising like Phoenix in the distance.