The Clark/McCarthy construction team, a joint venture between McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. and Clark Construction, is in the process of installing the project’s base isolators, a unique seismic safety system designed for this project. Base isolation works by dissipating earthquake-generated energy and will enable the new Stanford Hospital to withstand an 8.0 magnitude earthquake.

The project will feature 206 base isolators of two sizes that will be placed on pedestals in the building’s foundation, essentially acting as roller skates under the building during an earthquake. This allows the building to shift up to 6 feet — 3 feet each way — during a seismic event. The smaller of the base isolators weigh 2.5 tons each, and the larger ones weigh 4 tons each.

The base isolator system will help to ensure continuity of care in the event of an earthquake, which is essential given that Stanford Hospital is the only Level 1 Trauma Center in the region between San Francisco and San Jose.

The $2 billion hospital was designed by New York-based Rafael Viñoly Architects in association with Lee, Burkhart, Liu Inc., with offices in San Francisco, and will connect to the existing hospital via bridge and tunnel.

The facility will include a flexible pavilion design with oversized windows allowing for natural light and views from the 368 patient rooms, which will total 600 patient beds on site after the addition. The project also features the new Level 1 Trauma Center — three times the size of the current emergency department — with 58 treatment bays; surgical, diagnostic and treatment rooms; a central courtyard; and a green roof.

“Technologically, it will be one of the most advanced hospitals in the world with all of the smart systems in place,” said Bert Hurlbut, vice president of construction for the Stanford Hospital project.

The facility, designed for LEED Silver certification, will feature a displaced ventilation system, which pushes air high and ventilates low, giving patients a comfortable flow of air. Plus, it uses less energy to run, Hurlbut said. The window system is also hooked up to the building automation system, so instead of turning on the air conditioning, the building will slowly lower the blinds to start blocking some of the sunlight.

The Stanford Hospital is part of the SUMC Renewal Project, which also includes the expansion of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, the renovation of Hoover Pavilion, the Welch Road Utility Project and the replacement of School of Medicine facilities. Scheduled for completion in 2017, the hospital is expected to open for patient care in early 2018 while remaining operational.

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The $2 billion hospital is being designed by New York-based Rafael Viñoly Architects in association with Lee, Burkhart, Liu Inc., with offices in San Francisco, and will connect to the existing hospital via bridge and tunnel. It is part of the SUMC Renewal Project, which also includes the expansion of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, the renovation of Hoover Pavilion, the Welch Road Utility Project and the replacement of School of Medicine facilities. Scheduled for completion in 2017, the hospital is expected to open for patient care in early 2018 but remains operational.

Greg Schoonover, vice president and project executive for McCarthy, said that a large part of the project’s success thus far is a result of collocation. The project team consolidated offices in Palo Alto, Calif., in the latter part of 2012 and will be mobilizing to an office across the street from the job site in August. “This project made me realize the importance of collocation,” he said. “If we had a coordination problem, we could just walk down the hallway to get it resolved by the [design team].”

The facility will include a flexible pavilion design with oversized windows allowing for natural light and views from the 368 patient rooms, which will total 600 patient beds on site after the addition. The project also features a new Level 1 Trauma Center — three times the size of the current emergency department — with 58 treatment bays; surgical, diagnostic and treatment rooms; a central courtyard; and rooftop gardens. It will also be built to withhold the effects of and remain functional after an 8.0 magnitude earthquake.

Schoonover described the project as unique because it is base isolated and has a duel-glazed curtain wall system. Plus, it has a displacement ventilation system. Another standout feature is that the patient towers are being built in four separate pods that connect to a podium level, which makes up the first four levels of the building. “When you look at the project after completion, these pods will look independent buildings with a central atrium area as the focal point,” he said.

Compared to other projects he completed in the past, Schoonover said that the project team enhanced the level of modeling for the job, and McCarthy’s use of BIM as a whole continues to advance with each project the company completes.

“We are setting out to not have any deferred approvals at all,” Schoonover said. “Constructability reviews and coordination are incorporated into the drawings already. That allows us to have a more successful time in the field as we’re proceeding to go ahead with construction. Much of that is due to collocation and all the technology we’re using, which helps streamline the process and will make the job run much more smoothly.”

McCarthy earned a Celebration of Engineering & Technology Innovation (CETI) Award earlier this year specifically, for using BIManywhere software on the Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center replacement project, which is currently in Phase III of construction. Schoonover said that the Stanford construction team plans to use the same software as they move further along in the construction process.

Because of McCarthy’s expertise and innovative approach to construction for the health care sector, HC+O News interviewed Jim Mynott, vice president of design management for McCarthy’s Newport Beach-based Southern California office, and Chris Pechacek, director of virtual design and construction for the company’s Northern Pacific division, based in its San Francisco office. In this second part of the two-part interview, Mynott and Pechacek discuss how BIM software can help the operation of a facility.

To listen to the first part of the interview, click here.

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“Technology and mobility of health care is only going to change and evolve over time, so [the design] was created to adapt to such changes as well as accommodate those features in the building,” said Chan Li, partner, project director for New York-based Rafael Vinoly Architects, which served as the architect on the project.

Cannon Design was the consulting architect/medical facilities planner on the project, Affiliated Engineers Inc. and Primera Engineers Ltd. were the MEP/FP engineers and Thornton Tomasetti was the structural engineer. All four have locations in Chicago.

At first, when the university issued an RFP for a new hospital, the aim was to expand an existing facility. After design discussions, however, Rafael Vinoly Architects proposed the facility’s new design, which occupies the given site but also bridges across Maryland Avenue to a site to the west. This not only allows the hospital to consolidate the medical practices in one place, but it also achieves the hospital’s goal of maximum efficiency because the contiguous floors make it so staff don’t have to travel between levels of the building.

A major design factor was incorporating this larger facility into the overall look of the University of Chicago Campus. The university has a historic campus setting, which features a connection between the buildings and open green spaces; however, the medical center required a much bigger floor plan, making it difficult to use premium land for green spaces. This made an interior courtyard not possible in the design.

Instead, the design team created a Sky Lobby on the seventh floor of the building, which served as a new version of public space, housing reception, family waiting areas, a chapel, a business center, cafeteria and other public spaces. The traditional lobby is elevated, offering expansive views of the university, Washington Park, Lake Michigan and the downtown Chicago skyline.

“What Rafael [Vinoly] tried to do was think about the public space as a new public space defined in sections between different parts of the building that are stacked vertically by leaving one floor open that’s not occupied by clinical functions, “ Li said. “It becomes a hole in the middle of the building where family members are able to get away without going home. They’re still in the hospital but away from being in the health care environment all the time.”

Other design priorities were privacy in patient rooms, as well as enhancing visual connectivity between patients and nurses. The facility’s 240 patient rooms are each private and can comfortably accommodate multiple family members. On the patient room levels, waiting areas and nursing stations are accessible from the main elevators, and individual family waiting lounges also provide space for visitors.

The Center for Care and Discovery focuses on patient-centered experience and wants to use the latest technologies to help improve health care. The flexibility of the modular design helps achieve the needs to evolve with advances in surgical, imaging and therapeutic technologies that will help in treating complex illnesses, multi-organ transplants, robotic surgeries, cancer treatments and gastrointestinal diseases.

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