Turner Construction Company

The living hospital┬áThe Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, a keynote project for Detroit and southeastern Michigan, is soon to be handed over by Turner Construction Company, John OÔÇÖHanlon learns from project manager Jay McKee. Founded in 1902, Turner Construction CompanyÔÇÖs first job was to build reinforced concrete stairs in the New York City subway system. A century later itÔÇÖs a multibillion-dollar business spread across 43 offices in the United States and realizing projects in the Middle East, Europe, China and India as well. The Henry Ford Medical Center West Bloomfield is one of 30 such centers in the Detroit area run by the Henry Ford Health System. Now this pleasant suburb about 15 miles from the city center is getting a $310 million, 300-bed full-service hospital designed by Albert Kahn Associates of Detroit. Turner started work in October 2005 and is due to hand over the keys to the completed facility in March 2009.Constructing the new hospital has been an exciting and challenging process, according to TurnerÔÇÖs engineering project manager, Jay McKee, who has worked out of a trailer on the site for three solid years and so should be glad when he sees it finally towed away. However, the new Henry Ford facility will provide much-needed new hospital capacity for southeastern Michigan, and the entire team takes a lot of satisfaction from that, he says.This was a phased project that has benefited mightily from building information modeling (BIM). Modeling is a particularly valuable tool in TurnerÔÇÖs toolbox, and McKee is the Michigan officeÔÇÖs coordinator for BIM, so who better to explain how it works? ÔÇ£Building information modeling is a three-dimensional visualization of the project to make sure that everything fits in the space itÔÇÖs designed for. So the building exists electronically before anything happens in the field.ÔÇØ Turner used BIM for all the mechanical/electrical/plumbing (MEP) coordination of the new facility.┬á ItÔÇÖs one thing, says McKee, to show a nurse or doctor a set of plans of the hospital theyÔÇÖll be working in, but they may not be skilled in translating flat plans into three dimensions. They might not even be able to visualize very well with a 3D CAD rendering on a screen. So at West Bloomfield, Turner went one step further and mocked up a series of rooms in a warehouse not far from the site.Operating rooms, neonatal care facilities and the LDRP (labor, delivery, recovery and post-partum) rooms were all constructed in every particular, right down to the furniture, so that the clinical staff could walk through, get a feel for the space and the position of the services they would be using, and suggest any changes, all before the walls had started to rise. ÔÇ£Having full-scale mockups allowed the various user groups to provide valuable feedback into the design of the hospital,ÔÇØ says McKee. Another benefit delivered by BIM was the ability to reduce the concentration of manpower requirements on site at any one time. ÔÇ£On a big construction project like this you get peak days with up to 550 workers on the job. The BIM process allows a certain amount of prefabrication of materials, and that allows you to keep some of the on-site workforce down,ÔÇØ says McKee. Ultimately this results in greater efficiency for contractors installing the various systems, which translates into shorter schedule durations, all of which benefit a project.┬á The first stage was to build the Energy Center, which he describes as the heart or the brain of the entire facility. This was completed in first quarter of 2007 and contains all the heating systems, cooling towers and boilers as well as three emergency generators with enough fuel stored underground to run them for 72 hours if necessary.Next came the three four-story patient towers where the beds are located. The 330,000-square-foot Diagnostic and Treatment Center was built last of all because it is by far the most complex part of the project, says McKee. ÔÇ£We started construction in May of last year and are completing the entire job in about 22 months from stem to stern, so it has been fast-tracked since day one. The BIM process has really expedited our ability to get work done on the job.ÔÇØ The D&T is sandwiched between the new towers and the existing facility, tying the two areas together, which added to the complexity of the job.Innocuous-sounding requests for information (RFIs) are the shoal on which many construction projects founder. An RFI arises every time thereÔÇÖs an anomaly, and that may require work to stop while itÔÇÖs resolved, so by anticipating them the contractor can save a lot of money. You may never eliminate them, says McKee, but modeling the process in advance meant there were nowhere near as many cases where different trades had to work out how their respective contributions fit together. ÔÇ£ItÔÇÖs critical to find these RFIs early enough in the process to ensure that you donÔÇÖt have 25 trades people stop working while an answer is developed.ÔÇØ┬á Some things canÔÇÖt be factored in from the start. Hospitals often wait until the last moment to release what type of medical equipment they intend to install, McKee says. ÔÇ£Technology generates income for a hospital, and they want to be sure they have the latest, but that might have an impact on the facility infrastructureÔÇöthat newer piece of equipment might take more power or need more cooling than the ÔÇÿbasis of designÔÇÖ version. You inevitably have to deal with the challenge of making changes in the field.ÔÇØA case in point was an MRI scanner that was sourced as a newer, more state-of-the-art version than the one originally planned. The fact that it was heavier didnÔÇÖt matter because Albert Kahn Associates had designed the facility with enough structural strength to support it. However, its electrical requirements were different, it ran hotter and, crucially, it turned out to be noisier. Additional acoustical dampening and some changes to the cooling and electrical supplies had to be carried out, but these changes were much more straightforward thanks to the fast-track nature of the BIM process, which showed up their impact on other work going on at the time.The Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital will be LEED certified. Although pursuing LEED certification on any project is ultimately the decision of the owner, it is TurnerÔÇÖs policy to encourage its clients to go for certification, and in the case of a hospital itÔÇÖs a potent signal to the community that its healthcare provider wants to be a good environmental steward. West Bloomfield has some interesting components: the Energy Center is one; another is the ÔÇ£green roofÔÇØ over the Diagnostic and Treatment Center. This roof garden will not only significantly improve energy performance through insulation; it will give a pleasant aspect for those patients whose rooms overlook it. Others either look over one of the two atriums or have a tranquil view of the pond that bounds the site to the south, fed by the rainwater runoff from the hospital and adjacent site. TurnerÔÇÖs project staff of approximately 30 employees includes ten LEED-accredited professionals.┬á When it opens in the spring, this landmark project for the Henry Ford Health System will also stand as a great achievement for the people who built it and their families, many of whom live within a 15-mile radius. They are stakeholders in more ways than one.┬á