Ground was recently broken on a new ER and patient tower project at Banner Boswell Medical Center in Sun City, Arizona, with the demolition of a 33-year-old, two-story parking structure that paves the way for the start of new construction.
The new $106-million emergency room, main lobby and patient tower includes a 40,000-square-foot ER and a six-story tower that will serve as the hospital’s new main entrance and provide room for future growth.
The new ER, projected to complete construction in summer 2020, will provide much needed additional capacity. Banner Boswell’s existing ER often runs at or near capacity. The new ER will increase the number of beds by one-third — from 42 to 56 — allowing the department to care for up to 60,000 ER patients annually. The present ER was built to handle up to 45,000 patients annually.
The tower’s first floor, to open in late 2020, will contain the main lobby, gift shop, retail pharmacy, admitting desk and chapel. The five floors above the main lobby will remain “shelled” space, reserved for future inpatient rooms.
The project is being managed using Integrated Project Delivery with the owner, design team, general contractor and trade partners all co-located on the project site and committed to the success of the project through robust collaboration and innovation.
Some of the innovative cost savings measures on the project include prefabrication of the following components:
- Exterior skin, including glass, metal panel, exterior insulated finish system and masonry block
- Interior partition walls
- ER exam room headwalls including all MEP components
The prefabrication will be completed offsite in a shop for the interior scope and onsite in a controlled environment for the exterior skin.
As part of the IPD process, all the major building trade partners were contracted early in design to aid in target value design, constructability and Building Information Modeling coordination prior to permit. This has proven to save on costs and ensures the construction team is able to proceed with system fabrication soon after the building begins coming out of the ground.
The project team includes McCarthy Building Companies, HMC Architects, Buehler & Buehler, Southland, Foothills Fire Protection, Schuff Steel, Cannon & Wendt, University Mechanical, Norris Design and The Berg Group.
Rendering courtesy of HMC Architects.
