Shelby Farms Archives - HCO News

Collocation: A Benefit For Design and Construction Offices

Integrated project delivery (IPD) is gaining traction in the health care AEC industry. There has been a lot written about the benefits to the method, including budget control and schedule achievements.
Going into my first IPD project, I knew the process was different on a contractual level, and the traditional design process was altered to some degree. What I didn’t know much about was the strategy of operating a “collocation” office. The concept is simple: a team of contractors, architects and owners occupying a dedicated office during the design and construction of a project. I’d worked in several architecture offices, but never shared space with anyone other than interior designers and engineers.
How would it change our work process? Efficient or distracted? Would we be comfortable outside the culture (and relative comfort) of our office and how can we make the most of sharing an office with a construction management (CM) team under the close scrutiny of an owner?
The project was the re-use of the North General Hospital site in Harlem, which included a renovation of the 270,000-square-foot hospital into a 201-bed, long-term care hospital and a connected six-story 185,000-square-foot skilled nursing facility. Combined, the facilities became the Henry J. Carter Specialty Hospital and Nursing Facility. To meet the accelerated schedule of approximately 30 months from start of design to resident move-in, it became mandatory for the design team and construction manager to allocate staff full-time in a dedicated office together.
During schematic design, we moved from our midtown office and joined consultants for a total of six firms and approximately 30 staff at the first collocation. Technology was going to be critical for this office to operate.
Our relationship quickly developed with the CM team. This is where the IPD philosophy of shared incentives benefited the project by giving a financial reason to work together. But it was also a testament to individual personalities on all sides coming together with an IPD mindset. The atmosphere could be very intense at times, and in many ways, our traditional working boundaries became blurred. We could provide instant feedback to the CM’s estimators, schedulers and project managers and in turn we understood the impact of our design choices much better. An example of this was the phasing and logistics that would be involved with keeping a tenant operational in the building during the first half of construction. Instead of drawing a phasing plan based on what we thought would need to happen, we benefited from having access to the CM team. With our knowledge of code issues and the CM’s logistics planning, we worked through a solution that maintained egress for the tenant at a much quicker pace and precluded re-drawing the plan multiple times.
During the bid award phase, we were available to attend meetings with the CM and potential subcontractors to understand if the scopes were covered as intended and respond to any design intent questions immediately.
Most importantly, we developed relationships, and the quality of our communication improved. This real-time back and forth was very beneficial and challenged us to refine our time management skills. We still had to design the project, so the pressing meetings could have kept us off-task and prevented crucial milestones from being met. We benefited from having additional team members in our office drawing and working behind the scenes, while those of us onsite were essentially the coordination leaders, responding as needed.
Months later, toward the completion of construction documents, the team moved to the project site in Harlem. We reviewed field conditions with the CM, sub-consultants and owner, revising any details, orders, etc. with efficiency. Details could be worked out in the field and with instant feedback from all parties. We were the “eyes and ears” onsite and we benefited from having members of our team off site working without distraction whom we relied on to attend to the necessary revisions.
In this office setup, the fundamental goals of IPD were most apparent. Early on, it was clear that the collocation strategy was critical for the team to meet the schedule for a project of this complexity and occupancy date. With such high stakes for all parties, the collocation site certainly wasn’t without heated arguments where we lapsed back into traditional boundaries and the pace and stress levels was more intense than typical projects. There are plenty of recommendations and lessons learned:
• You need experienced and knowledgeable staff.
• Personalities of team members are just as important as respect. Anyone holding onto the “us versus them” thought would be out of place.
• Having part of the design team off-site was beneficial. It protected those back in the office from distractions at the co-lo. With decisions occurring quickly onsite, the remote staff can feel out the loop if they’re not kept up to date.
• Understand how you’re going to document conversations and decisions. When meetings occur quickly and often, you still need to record “why” you did what you did. Technology can help you log emails more effectively.
• Maintaining a connection to the home office helped counteract the feeling that we were isolated or forgotten.

Tom Hudak, AIA has been with Array Architects since 2006. He can be reached at thudak@array-architects.com

The post Collocation: A Benefit For Design and Construction Offices appeared first on HCO News.

UCSF Construction Team Collaborates on New Building Method

SAN FRANCISCO — Ten years after the 57-acre UCSF Mission Bay campus opened, construction on the UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay is still on schedule to be completed in August 2014 and open to the public in February 2015. And the construction team owes a lot of that to a holistic integrated project delivery (IPD) approach.

The IPD Approach

The IPD approach is basically a collaboration between the builder, designer and owner, but to say that is truly an understatement. In fact, the construction team sees it more as creating a virtual organization. “We really try to think of ourselves as one company, not 23 firms; we just get paid differently,” said Stuart Eckblad, director of design and construction for the medical center.

One major example of the collaboration efforts is the collocation of 30 organizations at the building site, which Ray Trebino, project manager for Redwood City-headquartered DPR construction, the builder/contractor on the project, said he’s never experienced at this magnitude.

Having the entire project team located on site allows for them to have daily meetings and work together to solve any issues that may arise within minutes, hours or a day maximum. “Since it takes about seven years to design a building and health care requirements change very six months in terms of codes, we have the ability to adjust for those changes,” Eckblad said.

It also allows for the different members of the team to have a better understanding and respect for what each other is doing. “As an architect, I’m a few roles divorced from the mechanical subcontractor, but on this project we’re sitting 5 feet from them, and it gives me a greater amount of respect for what they’re doing and allows us to understand the battles of what each party is fighting,” said Tyler Krehlik, project architect for San Francisco-based Stantec, the architect on the project.

With strict sustainability standards and budget restraints, the project team appreciates that the IPD approach was used from day one, in which everyone gathered to learn the sustainability goals for the project — currently being built to meet LEED Gold standards — how they could be met and what other opportunities there were to exceed the goals.

Having worked on LEED-bound projects before, Trebino believes this method is helping achieve that goal smoothly. In fact, there have been no schedule delays yet. “We could not have stayed on schedule using any other delivery method; this is essential to it being at where it is today,” he said.

While IPD is most common in the design phase, this project is extending it through construction and even using it in the field itself, setting up computer tablets on the construction site so that everyone is up-to-date on the most current drawings.

“This delivery method identifies concerns earlier in the process and allows us to come to a resolution that benefits all and minimizes the impact,” Trevino said.

Construction Update

The 878,000-square-foot, $1.5 billion medical complex aims to set new standards in patient- and family-centered health care, sustainability, safety and translational medicine.

In December 2012, the exterior skin of the buildings and on-roof helipad were completed, and construction of the pad will start at the end of February. Plus, electric services were connected to the hospitals’ green energy center, which will provide the complex with power.

About 950 construction workers are currently working on the interior of all six floors, painting patient rooms, installing cabinetry and sinks, and laying bathroom tiles.

The 289-bed hospital complex for children, women and cancer patients (a much-anticipated patient-care component of the campus) will feature a 183-bed children’s hospital with urgent emergency and pediatric primary care and specialty outpatient facilities; a 70-bed adult hospital for cancer patients; a women’s hospital with cancer care, specialty surgery and select outpatient services, as well as a 36-bed birth center; and an energy center, helipad and parking structure.

The post UCSF Construction Team Collaborates on New Building Method appeared first on HCO News.

Cancer Center Project Takes Collaborative Approach

BOSTON — Lawrence & Memorial Hospital’s Cancer Center in Waterford, Conn., is one of the first health care construction projects in the country to use an integrated project delivery (IPD) method to control costs and deliver a patient-friendly facility.

The IPD agreement — a three-party contract between Lawrence & Memorial Hospital, Suffolk Construction and architecture firm TRO Jung|Brannen — requires all risk and reward on the project be shared with all project stakeholders, including mechanical/plumbing/controls, electrical and site work contractors.

“IPD is an extension of lean construction, as it formalizes the collaboration from the beginning in the contract,” said Suffolk Construction’s Josh DiGloria, senior project manager for the Cancer Center.

Construction on the $34.5 million project begins this spring, with completion scheduled for September 2013. Boston, Mass.-based Suffolk Construction is the construction manager and TRO Jung|Brannen is the architecture firm, with Pamela Mace as the lead architect and project manager.

The 47,000-square-foot facility will provide extensive radiation and medical oncology programs and state-of-the-art treatment technologies. Part of Lawrence & Memorial Hospital’s master facility plan, the Cancer Center’s design incorporates plenty of natural light and will seek LEED Silver certification.

Lawrence & Memorial is a not-for-profit, general, acute care, private hospital licensed for 280 beds and providing patient care to medical, surgical, pediatric, rehab, psychiatric and obstetrical patients. It operates satellite facilities in various areas throughout southeastern Connecticut and manages eight physician practices.

Innovative Process

The facility is Suffolk’s first project with Lawrence & Memorial and while Suffolk has completed projects using the principles of IPD, this is its first true formal IPD contract.

The hospital wanted to move away from the traditional design-bid-build process where, after years of design work, bids may come in higher than anticipated and the general contractor may encounter gaps in design that need to be changed, explained DiGloria.

“Lawrence & Memorial was looking for a way to solve both of those problems,” he said. “How do you bring the contractor in early so the contractor is responsible to help prevent all those gaps in the design and really be a teammate to solve them during the design process?”

Lean construction techniques foster early collaboration among the various project team members and enable the general contractor and subcontractors to work more closely together to build sections of an entire building in stages, increasing efficiency and accountability.

To this end, the hospital launched the design process with a “Three P” event — production, preparation and process — that brought together about sixty people including staff, patients, design teams, materials management, physicians and others.

Participants discussed issues such as how material enters and leaves the building, patient movement and work flow. Moveable mockups were utilized and estimators attended to address the cost of the ideas.

“From that three-day event, the hospital executives felt that we really shortened the design process by six months,” said DiGloria. “It was really a positive event to be a part of.”

The post Cancer Center Project Takes Collaborative Approach appeared first on HCO News.