CONSTRUCTION BY DONNA HOGAN
Please Do Not Disturb: Hospital (Construction) Zone Constant planning and communication are top priorities for healthcare builders
T
he foremost focus in upgrading or expanding a hospital is keeping the work concealed from the patients. So says Steve Whitworth, Kitchell’s Healthcare Division manager. It’s not like adding or enlarging a store in a retail center, which might force shoppers to step around a construction barrier for a few days or have the piped-in music occasionally punctuated by a floor sander. “In a mall, people will be inconvenienced. In a hospital, a patient’s health is at stake,” Whitworth says. “In every single project we strive to be invisible. The ability to heal depends on the environment a patient is in. It‘s the only thing that matters at the end of the day.” The dilemma is that hospitals, as much or more than other commercial real estate structures, need to continuously get bigger and better, he says. “Planning, planning, planning,” is the key to keeping healthcare facilities humming smoothly while making major renovations, says Jay Stallings, associate administrator at Banner Desert Medical Center, which unveiled a major emergency department makeover in August. That mantra is echoed by other key players — from hospital administrators to construction engineers — who are continuously upgrading and expanding Arizona’s top hospitals to address medical care’s changing needs and technology advances while keeping the work virtually imperceptible to patients and staff.
Extensive renovation has resulted in a new emergency entrance at Banner Thunderbird Medical Center. 16 | November-December 2011