Become one of the first hospitals in Washington to
achieve a LEED silver rating.
This was a primary goal when MultiCare Health System’s
Good Samaritan Hospital planned major expansions at its Puyallup facility.
The $400 million project includes a new nine-story patient care tower,
central utility plant and parking structure. The 300,000-square-foot
patient care tower includes a main lobby, express services, inpatient
nursing units, emergency department, surgery and operating rooms with a
central sterile area, cardiac catheterization lab and interventional
radiology, diagnostic imaging and loading dock.
LEED documentation requires close collaboration between
various members of the design team, particularly architects and engineers.
Being on the same software platform helps a lot.
Three-dimensional building information modeling software
has been available for several years and represents a significant upgrade
from traditional 2-D CAD tools. But many architects and engineers are just
now switching over to the more sophisticated systems.
Good Samaritan illustrates the green benefits that
result when they do.
Patient care tower
Architects wanted Good Samaritan’s patient floors to
have access to daylight and the natural world. The building will include
green roofs, which provide more pleasing views for patients than the
typical cluttered roof.
The tower will also include light shelves at the
exterior windows to shade the lower glass while allowing more natural
light through the top of the windows. While these features promote a
better healing environment, they are also considered green and will help
capture LEED points. The light shelves were shown in the BIM model, which
made it very easy for the mechanical engineers to understand them and
include the effects in the HVAC cooling load calculations.
In a typical scenario, architects would prepare 2-D
plans of the building and then pass them along to engineers for fitting in
systems. Coordination would therefore take place in two dimensions on the
floor plans and in building sections.
Only after a contract was awarded would the contractor
put together a detailed set of large-scale coordination documents for the
various trades involved. If conflicts arose over limited space, as they
invariably did, change orders would affect both the schedule and total
project cost.
The Good Samaritan Design Collaborative, a joint venture
between Clark/Kjos and Giffin Bolte Jurgens, adopted a much wiser
approach. They established a cooperative relationship with other
disciplines and the contractor early in the project.
This integrated design approach allowed CDi Engineers,
Sparling and ABKJ to offer input from the outset concerning their
respective engineering specialties: mechanical, electrical and structural.
It was the first time that most engineers on the team had used Revit, new
software that takes BIM to a new level.
The contractor and major subcontractors were also
included in the design team meetings. This process allowed for a greater,
and earlier, understanding of the design intent for other team members,
greatly simplifying the critical communication process.
Central utility plant
Take, for example, the hospital’s new central utility
plant, which will be located across a busy intersection from the rest of
the facility. Huge pipes — 24 inches in diameter — run between the central
plant and the hospital. These chilled water pipes, along with electrical
wiring, will run in an 11-foot-diameter utility tunnel under the street.
BIM was used to model the two building vaults on the
ends of the tunnel and to coordinate the piping and electrical items
within the tunnel. Coordination with existing piping in the street was
required. Several alternatives for getting the utilities across the street
were examined by the design team and the contractors.
The use of the integrated approach provided buy-in by
all the design and construction team members long before groundbreaking.
Seeing how designs fit
BIM software lets designers create a virtual 3-D model
of a structure. They can then extract the specific views and information
they need.
For instance, users can click on a particular room and
instantly see details like height, area, volume, walls, ceilings, windows
and doors. Construction documents can then be created on the basis of this
information. Although they look like traditional 2-D CAD plans, BIM
documents also spell out materials and quantities required, making it
easier to plan and manage construction.
Revit is described by its manufacturer, Autodesk, as the
first “parametric building modeler,” meaning that changes in one design
element or view are immediately altered in all other views. The original
product has been expanded to target architects, structural engineers,
mechanical engineers, electrical engineers and the construction industry.
“The great thing about the newer BIM products is that
each discipline can see how diverse designs will fit together,” says
Leslie Jonsson, a project manager at CDi Engineers.
“Everyone suddenly understands what the space
constraints are. This saves time and money in construction, which is what
green building is all about — and explains why BIM can contribute to an
extra LEED point for teams that collaborate through BIM.”
Tangible benefits
Good Samaritan Hospital is on track for LEED silver
certification, an enormous triumph for the hospital.
LEED features will provide tangible benefits to the
hospital, such as contaminant prevention, an improved healing environment
and reductions in construction waste, water use and energy use.
The water use is expected to be reduced by 20 percent
and the energy use is expected to be reduced by at least 14 percent
compared with a conventional hospital. These reductions will result in
large cost savings to the hospital.
The patient care tower opens in early 2011, and the
parking garage is expected to open in mid-2009.
