hospital construction Archives - HCO News

Healthcare Facilities to Require Many Construction-Related Changes

HCO News Staff — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 18:07:09 +0000

By Mary Scott Nabers

There is no alternative to providing citizens with healthcare services and government leaders are searching for ways to upgrade, modernize and expand existing facilities while constructing new ones. The country’s healthcare infrastructure has definitely attracted national attention and that will stimulate demand for construction services significantly in the next few years. Construction with any healthcare facility is an important step forward. Globally there are needs that must be met that fall in line with what is required to service patients. There are many different construction needs from precision Coded Welding to finding the correct type of insulation for the ceilings, all of this must be put through a management board and researched before anything begins.

Some of the upcoming construction opportunities are huge. The city of Duluth in Minnesota has announced a medical infrastructure project that will likely represent an investment of more than $1.8 billion. City and government leaders will have some public funding but private investment will be required. A public-private partnership will upgrade medical facilities throughout the area.

As the demand for construction increases though, it is obvious that healthcare construction will change. There will definitely be new considerations and construction firms monitoring trends and needs will have a competitive advantage as construction opportunities increase.

Medical procedures and practices have evolved dramatically over the past decade. Leading-edge technology, research and training spaces will be required in all healthcare facilities. Digital record-keeping, network security, data analysis and cloud storage planning will be required. New servers, routers and cooling systems will have to be accommodated as construction plans are developed. Old hospitals and clinics that cannot be replaced will need to be redesigned and configured for technology requirements. Public facilities that require immediate attention are likely to need private-sector funding. That means that construction firms that understand public-private partnerships will benefit.

And, because so many hospitals have been impacted by storms in the past decade, resiliency will be a major consideration in new construction. Massachusetts General Hospital has announced that its $1 billion expansion will be designed to serve staff and patients following any types of future disasters. The construction that will occur there will also be funded in large part by private-sector investors.

A survey conducted by the American Society for Healthcare Engineering found that 89 percent of hospital facility professionals consider resiliency, such as ability to withstand natural disasters and power outages, one of the most critical components in the design of new healthcare facilities.

In many parts of the U.S., population growth is impacting healthcare systems and networks to the point that adjacent facilities are required. Because many hospitals must release patients quicker because of overload and insurance requirements, a demand for short-term rehabilitation facilities, day surgery clinics and urgent care locations has emerged.

The city of Pullman, Wash., is preparing to ask residents to approve funding for Pullman Regional Hospital’s proposed upgrades. A bond package will include construction of a community health facility, redesign and upgrade of the city’s regional hospital, implementation of a communitywide electronic personal health record system and a number of other smaller projects. The election will be held in April and if it passes, construction would break ground shortly after that. The city hopes to complete the project by 2021.

The University of California, San Francisco’s Medical Center has also announced an upcoming opportunity for design and construction services. Builders and those in the construction industry are soon to be employed, those with appropriate certificates such as forklift training. As the university expands and adds new programs and enhances existing programs, construction is required. The opening of the school’s Precision Cancer Medical Building is creating even more needs and construction firms interested in pursuing construction opportunities should know that preparation for services is underway now.

The University of Texas at Austin will soon select a construction manager-at-risk (CMAR) for the redesign of the Austin State Hospital. The new Austin State Hospital Brain Health Campus, which could cost up to $300 million, will include a new 240-bed hospital building as well as site development, support buildings and infrastructure improvements. Subcontractor opportunities could be advertised as early as the third quarter of 2019.

Research facilities on university campuses are expanding throughout the country. Many schools are affiliating with private-sector hospital chains and research capabilities make any university more attractive to private-sector investors and partners. Cancer research and treatment facilities are available in every state and research programs focusing on the brain and brain injuries are becoming prolific also. Research facilities will require construction to expand and upgrade in the immediate future.

Officials at the University of California, Davis Health (UCDH) have announced construction plans. A firm to design and construct renovations in the Ambulatory Care Center of the university’s Ellison Building will be selected soon. The teaching hospital will consolidate several clinical practices and bring them into the building. UCDH has said it wants to deliver the project using the Progressive Design-Build model for phased renovation of the four-story, 375,000-square-foot building.

To summarize – healthcare construction demands are spiraling upward significantly and companies are advised to monitor healthcare needs and changes that will be required very carefully.

Mary Scott Nabers is president and CEO of Strategic Partnerships Inc., a business development company specializing in government contracting and procurement consulting throughout the U.S. Her recently released book, Inside the Infrastructure Revolution: A Roadmap for Building America, is a handbook for contractors, investors and the public at large seeking to explore how public-private partnerships or joint ventures can help finance their infrastructure projects.

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New Baptist Memorial Hospital in Mississippi to be Completed This Fall

HCO News — Wed, 12 Apr 2017 17:55:14 +0000

OXFORD, Miss. — The new Baptist Memorial Hospital in Oxford will be one of the largest hospitals in North Mississippi once completed. The project began construction in 2014, and is slated for completion this November.

This 613,000-square-foot project has a budget of $300 million, with Earl Swensson Associates, Inc. in Nashville, serving as the architect, and Robins & Morton also in Nashville serving as the general contractor. The project includes a five-story, 534,000-square-foot replacement hospital and a 79,000-square-foot physician office building. The new facility is 63,000 square feet larger than the current facility, with private rooms for all patients.

There will be 217 rooms in the facility, with upgraded medical and surgical services, including cardiovascular surgery, neurosurgery, the Baptist Cancer Center and a 24-hour emergency room. This expansion is said to increase the hospital’s economic impact for the city of Oxford and for Lafayette County, and will provide new access to quality medical services in north Mississippi.

The hospital had a beam raising ceremony on May 17, 2016, with the final beam covered in signatures of Oxford residents, local government officials, employees of Baptist Memorial and the construction crew, according to a statement. The ceremony was led by Jason Little, the Baptist Memorial Hospital President and CEO of the Baptist Health Care Corporation.

The Baptist Hospital Staff has been meeting since Jan. 2016 to make sure the transition from the old hospital to the new will be seamless as possible with regards to equipment as well as patients. “While the design and construction phases of building a new hospital are critical, the transition phase is just as important,” said Bill Henning, CEO of Baptist Memorial Hospital North-Mississippi according to a statement.

As such, the hospital is working with Covalus — formerly Balfour Resource Group — to help the staff make the transition and planning as smooth as possible. Covalus will work with the hospital staff through the transition until Nov. 25 when all patients and equipment are predicted to be relocated and settled.

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2015 PDC Summit Wraps Up in San Antonio

SAN ANTONIO — The 2015 International Summit & Exhibition on Health Facility Planning, Design & Construction (PDC Summit) wrapped up this week in San Antonio with more than 3,200 senior leaders from hospitals, design firms and construction companies in attendance.

The PDC Summit is an industry event coordinated by a network of nonprofit organizations with expertise in health care planning, design and construction. Hosts for the event included the American Institute of Architects (AIA), American College of Healthcare Architects (ACHA), American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE), American Hospital Association (AHA) and Facility Guidelines Institute (FGI).

Teams involved in three hospital projects earned this year’s Vista Awards, which were presented at the PDC Summit. The Vista Awards, presented by ASHE, recognize the significance of collaboration in creating optimal health care environments. Winners exemplified outstanding teamwork in all stages of their respective health care projects, from pre-planning to the final reveal.

The winners included:

New Construction 
Baystate Medical Center’s Hospital of the Future
Springfield, Mass.
Baystate Medical Center has reached the halfway point in its 15-year construction master plan. The recent 630,000-square-foot campus expansion includes an inpatient bed replacement, adult and pediatric emergency department and trauma center, a heart and vascular center, surgery expansion, private patient rooms and new parking facilities. The design facilitates multidisciplinary care with a clear separation of public and patient flow from staff and supply movement. The result is a state-of-the-art building, which includes two seven-story wings and one five-story wing, focused on a patient-centered healing environment.

Renovation 
Mercy Hospital St. Louis’s 2nd Floor Women’s Health Center
St. Louis
This project involved the design and construction of an entirely new infrastructure and unit layout within the original 1962 building. Three wings on the second floor of a seven-story patient tower were gutted for the project while lean design concepts were analyzed and instituted for the new unit. Decentralized nurse stations, standard equipment and placement within the patient floors, and standard support room layouts on each wing have improved operational workflow. ASHE recognized team members for this project for keeping the project on track despite unexpected plumbing issues and other speed bumps along the way.

Infrastructure 
South Georgia Medical Center’s Power Plant Replacement
Valdosta, Ga.
The center’s original power plant from the 1950s was recently replaced with a modern plant designed to provide emergency power for the SGMC Main Campus as well as the new Dasher Memorial Heart Center and Patient Tower. The new power plant houses 42 miles of cables and conduit. When the power plant’s large diesel generators are fired up, the system uses 180 gallons of diesel fuel per hour to operate key systems within the hospital. ASHE recognized the innovation of the new plant.

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Legacy Project Award Recipients Announced

ORLANDO, Fla. — Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, N.H., and Griffin Hospital in Derby, Conn., were recently named the 2014 Legacy Project Award recipients at the International Summit & Exhibition on Health Facility Planning, Design & Construction in Orlando, Fla.

The inaugural Legacy Project Awards, organized by the American College of Healthcare Architects (ACHA), honors health care architecture that has and continues to demonstrate superior planning and excellence in design performance over an extended period of time. A five-person jury decides on the recipient of the annual award.

“A legacy is a gift that is passed down from one generation to another. A health care building that exhibits high-quality designs and encourages high-performance functioning with minimal upkeep is a legacy to those who inherit the building,” said Connie McFarland, FAIA, FACHA, president of the ACHA, in a statement.

The jury found that Griffin Hospital was ahead of its time, and the facility’s North Wing has required virtually no changes due to the hospital’s forward-thinking design. The consistent and innovative design of Griffin Hospital ensures that there are no “haves” and “have nots,” according to jurors. The S/L/A/M Collaborative of Glastonbury, Conn., served as the architect of record for Griffin Hospital.

“Griffin represents an extraordinary translation of a culture and philosophy into a design. Its legacy is that Griffin successfully demonstrates how a project can directly and positively influence human behavior,” said ACHA Juror Philip E. Tobey, FAIA, FACHA, senior vice president of Detroit-headquartered SmithGroup, JJR.

The DHMC integrated a medical school, hospital, clinic and the co-located Veteran’s Administration to serve their patients. The facility has maintained patient focus through a 65 percent increase in surgical cases and a 40 percent increase in admissions. W. Mason Smith III is the architect of record for the health care facility.

The inaugural awards were given to two very different projects and jurors hope that this conveys a meaning to future nominees.

"We felt that this sends a message that any project can be worthy of this award. We don’t want to make a habit of it but did want to demonstrate that both large and small projects could merit consideration, as well as projects that aged differently could demonstrate lasting impact,” said ACHA Juror David Allison, FAIA, FACHA, director of Graduate Studies in Architecture + Health at Clemson University.

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HCO Background Check

By Sue Wasserman

Russ Sedmak, Director of Healthcare Design, Heery

You can take the boy out of the tree-house but you can’t take the tree-house out of the boy. Russ Sedmak wouldn’t want it any other way. After all, it was that first tree-house, designed and built when he was eight that literally started him climbing the ladder to his career in architecture.

“My father, who was in manufacturing, always had lots of materials lying around, not to mention machinery such as lathes and drill presses,” Russ says. “Not only did I love watching him build and fix things, I loved designing things on my own – the tree fort, furniture, go-carts. Once I started drawing and realized I enjoyed that, too, I thought it would be cool to design buildings.” Never once has Sedmak wavered in his thinking.

His passion for design led the Ohio native to University of Colorado and a degree in architecture. Sedmak’s first post graduation projects for a small Boulder based firm were primarily wood framed structures, indicative of the region’s more natural design sensibilities.

“I realized early on that I wanted to work on larger, more complex projects,” Sedmak says. “I heard about a firm in Denver that was working on healthcare projects and looking for a professional to handle the creative planning side of facility design. I became fascinated by hospital design and how each facility seemed unique to the community it served. I enjoyed the incredible amount of planning that had to go into constructing a facility of this nature.”

Sedmak’s passion was apparent to his supervisors who quickly sent him up another rung of the career ladder to a role as project manager. While Sedmak was still fascinated by the art and science of building, he recognized his greatest strength was communicating with clients. “There’s an incredible amount of communication and outreach required to help clients reach consensus in their strategic decisions. These days I spend so much time in discussions with hospital CEO’s, COO’s and facility directors. Our role extends well beyond the nuts and bolts of facility design to helping clients plan for a future that is sustainable both from a business and environmental standpoint.”

While Sedmak is incredibly proud of his design work on The Medical Center of the Rockies, the nation’s largest and most complex LEED Gold hospital, if you ask him about his most rewarding project, it would be his role in the expansion and renovation of Aspen Valley Hospital, a 25 bed critical access facility located in Aspen, Colo.

“Our work with Aspen Valley Hospital spans more than a decade,” Sedmak notes. “Our original assignment was to work on a needs assessment for a 5,000-square-foot addition. As we delved into the project, we knew immediately that the hospital was functioning in a space that was less than half the size it needed to be to meet current standards and community requirements. Although the facility’s needs for growth were great, the community was averse to facility expansion.”

More than design expertise, the project required the skills of a diplomat to cut through community and city planning board doubts as well as changes in administration. “In the end, through effective outreach, we were able to help the hospital convince city planning officials and the community at large that expansion was necessary for the long term viability of the hospital. As of now, we’ve built a new birth center, which is phase one of our four phase master plan. We’ve just broken ground on phase two, which includes a patient care pavilion, ICU, cardiac rehabilitation center and outpatient clinic spaces. In this second phase, we’re also building an affordable housing development for staff, a facility that will be a nearly net zero energy structure. That’s something we’re really excited about. ”

When all four phases are said and done, the hospital will also have new emergency, imaging and surgery areas; new entrance and lobby; and a completed master plan. It isn’t often that one design team is able to fully implement an entire hospital campus’ master plan.”

As Heery’s new director of healthcare design, Sedmak is devoting a great deal of time focused on the industry’s future. While he believes a growing number of hospitals will embrace sustainable design, he also believes hospitals and architects must embrace the addition of testing into the mix once the facility has been opened and occupied for one, two and three years to study actual versus intended performance.

“We’re currently working with MCR to test actual energy consumption,” he offers. “Actual energy consumption isn’t something you can map immediately because hospitals typically aren’t fully occupied when they first open.” Now that the hospital is fully staffed, occupied and operational, Sedmak and MCR Director of Facilities Bob Gance can map total energy and water usage during slow and busy periods. “Our goal is to validate systems and determine whether they are operating as we had planned,” he adds. “For example, we want to know if water consumption during the summer months is higher or lower than we anticipated.

Depending on the actual figures, the next question we’ll ask ourselves is how we might design differently to achieve optimum results. The bottom line for hospitals isn’t being able to put a plaque on the wall but being able to see the natural resources and money they’ve saved. I suspect the future may not be as tied to LEED Certification as it will be to actual building performance.” Sedmak and Gance, will be presenting their findings at ASHE’s PDC conference in March 2011.

One of Sedmak’s personal goals is to achieve LEED’s 75 percent daylighting requirement in a major hospital. “We were close on MCR, but the acute nature of the facility made it difficult. In Europe, for example, the shape of buildings is mandated to limit the size of the building’s envelope to ensure they have a much higher daylight ratio. I know this is something we can do, something that will not only be healthy for patients, but for staff and physicians as well.”

As for the next frontier, Sedmak sees opportunities to develop healthcare facilities beyond U.S. borders. “For a number of years, U.S. firms were planning and designing for clients in China and the Mideast. Now it seems like India, with its tremendous population and humanitarian demands, is presenting opportunities.” Heery, in fact, has signed an exclusive agreement with a Mumbai-based architecture firm to provide planning and design for upcoming healthcare projects.

As much as he enjoys diving into his work, whenever he can cobble more than few days together, Sedmak leaves his beloved mountains behind to dive into the peaceful waters in places like Mexico and the Caribbean. “Few people know about my passion for scuba diving,” he says. “I’ve gone on more than 100 open water dives. It really is like being in another world, as you’re suspended weightless, breathing from a tank and regulator, experiencing an eco-system that’s completely foreign to most people. Diving has made me appreciate just how massive the ocean is and how significant it is to the health of our planet. It makes you appreciate the fact that everything we do on land is interconnected.”

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Down to the Wire

When the busy Chicago-area Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare broke ground on a new, fully integrated 50-acre hospital campus in 2008, the size and complexity of the new facility left little room for delays or errors in the construction process.

Founded in 1926, Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare serves more than 400,000 patients in the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst. To assist with a growing demand and to provide greater convenience for its patients, Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare broke ground on a new, fully integrated 50-acre hospital campus in 2008.

The new five-story facility offers patients access to inpatient care in a new 866,000-square-foot acute-care hospital with 259 private rooms, a full array of outpatient services in the existing Elmhurst Memorial Center for Health, and a variety of physician offices in two new proposed medical office buildings. Interconnection between all the buildings will make it easier for patients to go from physician visits to diagnostic testing, to inpatient or outpatient care.

In addition, the CyberKnife Center of Chicago will also be moving to the new campus. CyberKnife provides a computer-controlled radiosurgery system, and the new center will be the first in the Chicago area to feature the next-generation CyberKnife equipment and technology.

Meade Electric, the project’s electrical contractor, chose Cerrowire to provide building wire, in cooperation with Steiner Electric and Callas/Kingsley Electrical Sales, Cerrowire’s manufacturer’s representative agency.

One of the reasons Cerrowire was selected was its new product, SLiPWire, a thermoplastic high heat-resistant nylon-coated wire that does not require additional lubrication for pulling. The cables themselves are very easy to manufacture and with a new Speed Record while Printing on Cables being set – their production rate will only continue to increase as equipment gets better so they can guarantee a constant supply of it. Manufacturing companies responsible for making wire and cable products will be able to get them off the production line much faster with this new technology leading to More Productivity thanks to Leibinger and its revolutionary printing methods. Meade was looking to save time and money by not having to lubricate the cables for each pull. SLiPWire is a co-extruded cable, meaning the PVC and Nylon layers of the jacketing are extruded onto the cable simultaneously. This results in a much better looking and superior performing cable, since the two layers have a much tighter bond. Meade employees found that this kept the SLiPWire cables from tearing and allowed the product to bend and corner much more easily. Some manufacturers of cable and wire are investigating tungsten’s benefits as a means of providing a stronger, more durable, and heat-resistant product.

In February of 2010, Cerrowire interviewed Meade Electric installers when the job was about 80 percent complete and about 40 percent of the wire had been energized. They found very few problems with the wire, including remarkably few nicks or tears, and no grounds or shorts.

The SLiPWire cables also feature True Sequential Footage, which uses a footage mark to document remaining wire, beginning with zero at the bottom of the reel and ending with the finished length at the top. The footage mark allows for quick identification of the re-order point, guaranteeing the full purchased wire length and reducing random lengths.

“I loved the footage marks,” said Bob Sinnot, Meade Electric foreman, “They are the best thing about the wire. You start with the top of the reel, and you know how much you pulled off and how much is left on there.”

True Sequential Footage uses Doppler lasers to ensure precision far more accurate than a mechanical counter. The non-contact capabilities allow for zero slip and zero wear compared to a contact counter during the cutting process. Testing indicates that the measurement system is accurate to one-tenth of a percent.

Normally, a wire distributor would cut the wire and serve the end user (contractor). The Elmhurst project made use of a creative and collaborative solution in which the cuts were run in line at the insulation jacketing line of Cerrowire’s manufacturing plant, and then packaged onto smaller reels exactly to the length needed for a particular pull. Meade reviewed drawings and decided on the cuts required and provided Cerrowire with a list of what was required for a particular portion of the job and the order in which they wanted the material to arrive.

Cerrowire had an employee at the wire plant serving as a liaison to the contractor, who worked as a scheduler to ensure good communication and guarantee the plant had the lead time needed to produce and deliver wire to keep up with the construction progress.

Close coordination meant cuts would be made as they were manufacturing the wire and footage could be run exactly to what was needed. No cutting needed to be done by installers, which saved significantly on time.

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