Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center & Children’s Hospital announced this afternoon plans for a $19.2 million expansion and remodel of its adult cardiac intensive care unit.

Construction is scheduled to start July 28 and to be completed in spring of 2016.

The project will add 12 critical-care beds to the unit, giving it a total of 34 beds there, in a first phase of improvements. The second phase is slated to involve modernizing the current, 22-bed unit. Sacred Heart plans to install new monitoring devices and other, more mobile equipment throughout the unit. The project also will include construction of an open-air courtyard to be used by ambulatory patients and their family members.

Bouten Construction Co., of Spokane, is the contractor on the project, and Mahlum Architects, of Seattle, designed it.

Sacred Heart plans to continue to admit patients with critical heart conditions throughout construction.

Once the expansion and modernization are completed, the hospital expects to hire more critical-care nurses.