PITTSFIELD – It wasn’t quite as originally scheduled, but groundbreaking for a new $1.3 million surgical wing at Sebasticook Valley Hospital began this week.

Earth was being removed from a small hill outside the existing surgical suite, between the hospital and its business offices.

Sue DiRosario of SVH said Wednesday that although construction was to have begun in June, the delay was part of normal construction schedules and the crew “will work right through the winter.”

DiRosario also said that although parking is decreased outside the existing emergency department, the construction will not affect ambulance traffic.

The new project will add a second operating room, a seven-bed recovery unit and a room dedicated solely to colonoscopies.

Hospital administrator Jack May said the wing is desperately needed. The number of surgeries at the hospital, founded in 1963 and serving 13 central Maine communities, has doubled over the past two years. May said that more physicians and better techniques have led to the steep rise in surgeries, which he predicted will be more than 1,300 this year.

As more physicians practice at SVH, however, they have been competing for space and time, May said. The expansion also is planned to give patients more privacy.

DiRosario said the hospital is in the midst of a capital campaign to raise one-third of the projected costs for the expansion.

Construction will cost $950,000 and the new equipment will run between $250,000 and $300,000. One-third of the cost will come from fund raising, one-third will be from hospital revenue and one-third will be borrowed.

The new wing follows on the heels of four major projects in the past 14 years, including a $4.5 million renovation and reconstruction from 1989 to 1993, the creation of the $1 million STEP Center for rehabilitation in 1998, the addition of a $1.8 million Outpatient and Women’s Health Center in 2002 and construction in 2000 of a $70,000 landing pad for LifeFlight air ambulances.