McCarthy Building Companies recently broke ground on a new ER and patient tower project at Banner Boswell Medical Center in Sun City, Ariz., 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 (ER), main lobby and patient tower at Banner Boswell Medical Center, located at 10401 W. Thunderbird Blvd. in Sun City, Ariz., includes a 40,000-square-foot emergency room and a new six-story tower that will serve as the hospital’s new main entrance and provide room for future growth.
The new ER, which is 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 a third — from 42 to 56 — allowing the department to care for up to 60,000 ER patients annually. The current ER was built to handle up to 45,000 patients annually.
“Banner Boswell Medical Center opened nearly 50 years ago to serve the small, but growing community of Sun City,” said Banner Boswell Chief Operating Officer Brian Standage. “Since then, our hospital has evolved into a leading provider of medical care in the Northwest Valley, including a nationally-recognized heart program. Our new ER and patient tower positions us to serve the community for the next 50 years and beyond,” he said, “as we strive to make healthcare easier and life better for our patients.”
The new tower will represent an additional $46 million investment into the community by nonprofit Banner Health. Combined with the new emergency room, which the community is helping support through donations to the Sun Health Foundation, Banner Boswell is set to receive an investment totaling more than $106 million.
“What an exciting time this is for the community as a new milestone in health care is occurring, thanks in part to community support for the ER through Sun Health Foundation’s Generosity for Generations Campaign,” said Joe La Rue, Sun Health President/CEO. “We are proud of the philanthropic partnership we have with Banner Boswell – philanthropic partners to continue a legacy of health care.”
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. “Shell space” is space constructed to meet future needs; it is space enclosed by an exterior building shell, but otherwise unfinished inside.
The project is being managed using Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) 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.
“Co-locating the entire project team by bringing all stakeholders together in one facility has proven to be an immeasurable asset that promotes collaborative team work, a solutions-oriented culture, and a high level of accountability from all project stakeholders,” said Chris Jacobson, vice president of McCarthy Building Companies. “Hospital construction projects inherently possess a lot of moving parts, and traditional project delivery methods often result in a fair amount of redesign. By employing IPD and co-location strategies, the team is able to move forward unimpeded.”
Some of the innovative cost savings measures on the Banner Boswell project include prefabrication of the following components:
• Exterior skin, including glass, metal panel, EIFS (Exterior Insulated Finish System) and masonry block
• Interior partition walls
• ER exam room headwalls including all MEP (Mechanical / Electrical / Plumbing) 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 (BIM) coordination prior to permit. This has proven to save on costs and ensures that the construction team is able to proceed with system fabrication soon after the building begins coming out of the ground.
The architect on the project is HMC Architects. Major trade partners include Buehler & Buehler, Southland, Foothills Fire Protection, Schuff Steel, Cannon & Wendt, University Mechanical, Norris Design and The Berg Group.
