The Valley Cancer Center and Doctors Hospital of Manteca Imaging Center complex is on target to open between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

The $8 million complex is now under construction on Norman Drive behind J&M Equipment on Spreckels Park.

There were 55 truckloads of concrete on Monday that delivered some 400 cubic yards of material into six-foot-wide forms that stood about 15 feet high. The cancer center building itself and its concrete vault stands 40 feet square and will house a linear accelerator that will be used for radiation therapy. It will take 28 days for the concrete to cure.

Dr. Gurpreet Dhaliwal, M.D., said that with the use of the unit some radiation treatments will be reduced to being only 90 seconds in duration. He noted that especially with prostate cancer, the treatments will be far less invasive to the patient.

“The IMRT system is very popular for prostrate treatment. Why would you do anything more invasive?” he asked.

The concrete delivery trucks pulled into the construction site at 6 a.m. Monday morning with workers devoted to a continuous, uninterrupted pour. They had expected to be done by about 1 p.m. They were delivering about 50 yards per hour, according to Eddie Cuellar, operations manager of the Knife River Company.

When the pour is complete there will be about 520 yards of concrete that make up the walls, he added.