Anti-climb perimeter
for a secure state hospital.

The Southeast Michigan Psychiatric Hospital is the state’s newest inpatient psychiatric facility, built in Northville Township to replace the former Hawthorn Center and Walter P. Reuther Psychiatric Hospital. It’s a 400,000-square-foot, 264-bed hospital serving both adults and children, and a facility like that lives or dies on its perimeter. We built it.

This is not fence work in the ordinary sense. A secure psychiatric hospital needs a perimeter that does two opposite things at the same time: keep patients safely contained inside defined areas, and keep the outside world from getting in, all without turning a place of care into something that looks and feels like a prison. That balance is the entire challenge, and it drove every decision on this job.

The answer is welded anti-climb mesh. Unlike chain-link, the mesh pattern is too tight to climb or to cut and peel back, there are no footholds and no easy breach. We ran it tall around the secure areas and finished the top with inward-angled anti-climb extensions, so the perimeter can’t be gone over even if it’s reached. Secure swing gates provide the controlled entry points, and the fence ties directly into the building walls to form enclosed courtyards, giving patients real, contained outdoor space rather than none at all.

Beyond the secure line, we handled the rest of the site’s fencing scope: railing, standard fencing in the non-secure areas, and dumpster enclosure gates. One contractor, the full range from maximum-security perimeter to back-of-house service enclosures, coordinated with the construction manager and the trades around us on an active, fast-moving state construction site.

High-security fencing is unforgiving in a way ordinary fencing isn’t. On a standard fence, a post an inch off or a slightly loose panel is cosmetic. On a secure psychiatric perimeter, every gap, every fastener, and every clearance is a potential breach point, so the whole system has to be installed to a tighter standard and inspected against the security specification, not just eyeballed for looks.

The anti-climb top extensions are a good example. Getting that inward angle right, consistently, across a long run that curves with the site and steps up and down with the grade, takes planning and craftsmanship. Done right it’s a seamless line that quietly does its job. Done wrong it leaves weak points exactly where the perimeter is supposed to be strongest.

Then there’s the coordination. A state hospital this size is built by many trades at once against a hard, publicly reported deadline. Our fencing had to integrate with the building itself where courtyards tie into the walls, work around the access and security systems, and stay on the construction manager’s schedule so the perimeter was ready when the facility needed it. That is the difference between a fence contractor and a security-perimeter contractor.