CREJ - Building Dialogue - March 2015
Saint Joseph Hospital has been a Denver fixture since Colorado’s territorial days. downtown, and the hospital moved to its present site in theIts original 1873 iteration was Uptown neighborhood a few years later. The facility saw the first brass sterilizer west of the Mississippi River and X-ray machines just a few years after their invention.
But times change, and SCL Health acquired the campus and began writing the next chapter of the hospital in 2011 with Mortenson as the general contractor. Groundbreaking for the new construction took place in December 2011. “That’s when we started the enabling work phase,” said Bill Gregor, director of operations at Mortenson Construction. That included demolition of some of the buildings and realigning Downing Street to the original grid to “create the superblock the hospital sits on.” Downing had been rerouted to accommodate an expansion for the since departed Children’s Hospital, which occupied the site from 1917 to 2008. Nearly everything has changed. “The only element that remains is the Russell Pavilion,” said Gregor. “The new building is connected to it.” “From Day One, the project’s challenge was going to be the schedule to make this building ready by the end of 2014,” said Gregor. That meant meeting a 30-month timeline rather than the typical 48-month schedule for a project of this scale. Mission accomplished: The first patients were admitted on Dec. 13, 2014, after a day-long move that was choreographed down to the minute. “Everybody had to work together to make that happen,” said Gregor. “We were building before design has completed.” “A complicated building is a bit like a three-legged stool,” said Sarah Simpson, principal at H+L Architecture in Denver. All three legs – the owner, designers and builders – “have to come to the party to collaborate and contribute.” Simpson said that the fast pace meant that the team had to go back and rework certain aspects after the floors were poured. “All of the equipment is purchased after design is completed,” she explained. “We go back and re-coordinate all of the power and data connectivity afterwards. That process required a lot of collaboration.” “Technology and its interface with everything is becoming a bigger factor for design teams,” Simpson added. It’s even a bigger factor in health care. “The only piece of equipment in a hospital that doesn’t have a data connect is a trash can.” H+L has worked with SCL and its predecessor, Exempla, for 30 years and was on the design team at the new Children’s Hospital in Aurora. Simpson said that the experience was invaluable on the Saint Joseph project. “Health care is one of the most highly regulated and highly constrained design types there is,” she said. “We did as a firm take advantage of lessons learned from Children’s.” This meant getting an early start on doors and associated hardware, which in hospitals are “very precise and specialized” and have a long lead time. The design team also made educated guesses on the equipment to ensure power and space would be adequate. “That part was a success,” said Simpson. “It saved us a lot of time.” “We implemented a lot of prefabrication to accelerate the schedule,” said Gregor, noting that it not only helped save time, but it also saved money and improved quality. He pointed to “a shortage of trade resources” as a big factor in the decision. “Prefabrication offers us an opportunity to level our trade needs. We’re able to level those trades out.” That’s especially important considering the scale of the project: The crew peaked at about 1,250 workers. Another “defining challenge,” added Gregor, was “the size and complexity of this project on a dense urban health care campus.” “What I hear so far is that this doesn’t feel like a hospital,” said Al Davis, SCL’s vice president of facilities development, planning and construction. That means outdoor areas on every floor, plenty of natural light and a design that’s more conducive to health care than that of the previous building. Bringing gastrointestinal, cardiovascular and other operating rooms together on the second floor makes for “economies of scale and efficiencies,” Davis explained. “Everything you could possibly need, it’s all on the same floor.” Larger patient rooms and more windows “add up to a better healing environment,” said Dr. Lauren Fraser, president of the hospital’s medical staff. “When you walk in, it’s nice, but it’s not palatial. It’s an appropriate use of health care dollars.” Gregor described the end result as “a building for the next 100 years.” “That became a guiding principle for us – building for the future,” he said. “Not just the short-term future, but the long-term future.” This means creating a flexible floor plan that can accommodate technological change. “There aren’t any structural walls in it,” noted Gregor. The floor-to-floor distances are notable, ranging from 15 feet on the upper floors to 21 feet on the mechanical-bearing floors. “The IT backbone is very robust, as robust as it can be,” said Gregor. “The building is completely interfaced” – HVAC and a host of other systems can be controlled remotely. Next up: the renovation of Russell Pavilion later in 2015 and the demolition of the old hospital structure by the end of 2016. Humboldt Street will be reconnected to 18th Avenue, and the land vacated by demolished buildings will be utilized for parking and green space, with an eye on future expansions. Gregor said it all “absolutely” plays into the 100-year plan. “The positioning of this new building is very strategic in that regard.” PROJECT TEAM OWNER: SCL Health GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Mortenson Construction ARCHITECT: H+L Architecture, Davis Partnership Architects, ZGF Architects STRUCTURAL AND CIVIL ENGINEER: Martin/Martin LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: H+L/Davis Partnership Architects,a joint venture ART CONSULTANT: NINE dot ARTS