Kaiser, Santa Clara Hospital Phase II

The Kaiser Santa Clara Replacement Campus consists of 5 new structures built on a 56 acre greenfield site. The campus was built to replace a 50+ year old hospital and medical campus two miles away.

The hospital is the hub of the campus and was built in two phases, but the building was designed to ultimately function as a single facility. Phase I of the Hospital consisted of a 297,000 square-foot one-story below grade, 3-story above grade moment framed structure with the central plant in the basement. Phase II of the Hospital consisted of a 416,600 square-foot one-story below grade, 4-story above grade hospital.

Together, the hospital projects included patient beds, central plant, radiology, outpatient services, laboratories, emergency department, operating rooms, pharmacy, inpatient rehabilitation, cafeteria, safety and security departments. The other 4 buildings on the campus included a medical office building, cancer center, and two parking structures.

Rudolph and Sletten took a leadership role early in preconstruction to manage the campus wide milestone schedule and manage the individual detailed construction schedules for all projects on the campus. Through the implemented of the project schedule to address design and plan review effects on milestones, the right project decisions were made, as well as ensured team accountability for the schedule.

During construction, Rudolph and Sletten included detailed microschedules in the baseline schedule to identify and address schedule challenges. The transparency of the schedule analysis allowed the team to understand the effect of change or decision making on the schedule. It also allowed for Rudolph and Sletten to determine “work around plans” to reduce or even mitigate such effects on the critical path.

Hospital Phase 1 was completed two years before Hospital Phase 2 and Kaiser was actively using Phase 1 for outpatient surgery, radiology, and the lab areas. Rudolph and Sletten identified all the connection points and MEP systems that would have to be coordinated connection to the fully active Hospital Phase 1. Architecturally, there were 13 physical building ties-ins from Phase 2 into Phase 1; this meant tying to active corridors and using full infection control procedures to complete the physical tie-ins. Mechanically and electrically the Phase 2 system tie-ins to an active Phase 1 building were much more challenging. This required even more coordination with OSHPD because at the end of the day Hospital Phase 1 and 2 systems needed to function as one building.

And because of the extensive preplanning with OSHPD, Anshen+Allen, Kaiser, and Rudolph and Sletten, OSHPD sign off of Hospital Phase 2 went smoothly.

Kaiser Santa Clara Hospital Phase 2 was the first hospital project in California to use Building Information Modeling (BIM) to assist with the MEP coordination process in highly congested/MEP system pinch points in the building. There were two particularly congested areas in the building where the MEP coordination team was challenged to find an economical solution to run all the utilities in the two pinch point areas. Rudolph and Sletten suggested using BIM to provide a 3D model of the highly congested areas. This proved to be an economical solution to show a 3D view of the areas in question to the Mechanical Engineer. Only with BIM were we able to clearly identify the conflicts to the Mechanical Engineer and Owner and find economical solutions that worked to satisfy the architect, owner and engineers.