Proven
Expertise
in High-Performance Healthcare Design
About CMTA
CMTA was founded in 1968 and is recognized as a national leader in high performance, sustainable design within the engineering industry. Our firm has leveraged our expertise in high performance, energy-efficient design into a nationwide practice that includes consulting engineering, performance contracting and zero energy design, technology solutions, and commissioning services.
CMTA prides itself on its data-driven, performance-based design process. Performance-based design uses benchmarking of our projects’ real-world energy usage as a challenge to our engineers to continuously improve energy performance. CMTA’s first signature performance-based design project was Richardsville Elementary School, the nation’s first operational Zero Energy school. Since then, our Zero Energy projects have led our firm into the national spotlight.
Because we walk the talk, we are true partners vested in sharing our knowledge with our clients. Our corporate headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky and our Lexington, Kentucky offices are both zero energy buildings with perfect ENERGY STAR scores. And our CMTA Energy Solutions corporate office in Louisville is the first in the U.S. to operate as Zero Energy and achieve WELL Gold certification. CMTA strives to create strong relationships with building owners and managers while also focusing on the health and comfort of the people who live, work, and play in spaces we design.
CMTA Headquarters Campus Louisville, Kentucky
Local + National Healthcare
Effective engineering services in healthcare is a passion of ours, and it shows in the care and attention to detail we put into every project. Whether it’s a small clinic or large hospital, specialized expertise must be a top priority across the design team. The mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems are critical elements to these buildings. We understand special attention must be given to the design regarding infection control, equipment functionality, illumination levels, indoor air quality, and comfort levels for patients, visitors, and staff. We bring our energy efficient focus to healthcare design and work with our hospital clients to improve their energy efficiency and reduce maintenance and operations costs.
Long-Lasting Healthcare Partnerships
Quality partnerships are built on mutual respect and trust. We value our clients and the trust they place in us as engineers — a trust that is earned not only through high-quality engineering, but exceptional service and innovative, sustainable solutions. CMTA has maintained long-lasting and productive relationships with clients in the healthcare industry across the nation. We have completed numerous master planning, MEP infrastructure renovations and new construction projects for a wide-variety of hospital types ranging from critical access hospitals to sprawling medical campuses. A few of these notable relationships are highlighted below.
Norton St. Matthews Women and Children’s Louisville, Kentucky
University of Kentucky Medical Center
Lexington, Kentucky
IU Regional Academic Health Center
Bloomington, Indiana
Healthcare Technology + Security Expertise
We provide comprehensive technology solutions for healthcare clients nationally.
Our team understands that today’s modern hospitals are made up of complex, missioncritical technology systems in order to meet patients’ and healthcare teams’ needs. Our team strives to design, integrate, streamline, and procure these systems to be as simple as they can be.
An average hospital technology system runs a complicated combination of
infrastructure, communication, and security features, many of them wireless and essential to daily patient care. Our team designs technology to be a staff multiplier, increase efficiency and allow the healthcare team greater flexibility as they perform their duties, ultimately improving patient care while ensuring privacy and safety.
Because we know healthcare technology is a rapidly advancing field, our teams’ designs provide flexibility in the short-term and
expandability for future needs, all while maintaining a focus on bottom-line costs. We believe that the key to managing these criteria successfully is to engage the facility owner and the design team at the start of a project. Our team leads charrettes and work groups to gather input and develop a technology and security plan that achieves the client’s goals and creates buy-in from the design team, department-level endusers, and facility managers alike.
Novak Center for Children’s Health
Louisville, Kentucky
Occupant Health + Wellness
CMTA’s buildings are moving beyond energy efficiency and sustainability to lead the industry’s focus on improving occupant health. Our team has a vast understanding of the building performance metrics and design strategies that improve the built environment for occupant comfort and wellness. This knowledge allows us to be successful in incorporating strategies that improve the health and wellbeing of the occupant while still maintaining budget and energy efficiency goals.
Our continuous drive for improvement fuels our research into Indoor air quality, lighting, and comfort as markers for occupant wellness. This allows us to incorporate proven strategies into every project we complete. We focus on delivering the best value for the building owner and the
occupants, which goes beyond costs, and improves human health while maintaining budget and energy-efficiency goals.
Patient and Staff Experience
We want patients to feel as if at home — lighting is a large part of creating this inviting atmosphere. By using the latest technology and cost effective strategies, we aim to create a more comfortable, less-institutional feel, while still being functional. In addition to providing natural daylight, circadian lighting strategies are utilized to help support the sleep health of both patients and staff. This is accomplished by providing high-energy melanopic lighting during the day, and warmer, more soothing lighting after hours.
We spend about 85% of our lives in buildings, and it is essential that architects and engineers understand how the built environment affects the health and wellness of its occupants.
Altru Health System Hospital
Altru Health | Grand Forks, North Dakota
Altru Health System has a vision of a new era in healthcare. This vision includes prioritizing the patient and family experience, implementing cutting-edge technology, expanding clinic services, and integrating physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. The design team is helping bring this vision to life through a collaborative and innovative process.
The site is surrounded by green space, which is utilized in the hospital campus design to provide a calm and healing atmosphere. Each of the 200 patient rooms contains at least one window providing views of the outdoors. Our lighting
designers emphasize the natural light to minimize the use of artificial light when necessary.
One unique feature of the mechanical design is the use of a water-side economizer. This eliminates the need for air side economizers, which reduces humidification loads and normalizes building pressure.
Project at a Glance Completion: 2025
Size: 500,000 SF
Cost: $305,000,000
Project Type: New Construction
Regional Academic Health Campus
IU Health | Bloomington, Indiana
IU Health’s Regional Academic Health campus includes a new 735,000 SF acute care facility along with an educational facility tied to Indiana University. The facility brings state-of-the-art equipment and procedures to the residents of Bloomington and surrounding areas. Services include, obstetrics, diagnostics, ICU, and surgery, to name a few.
At the start of the project, IU Health had an aggressive plan for involving the local design community to help with the many pieces of this facility. CMTA was a part of that design group, and at the time, our Technology Solutions group was the only firm selected to work on all buildings and parts of the project. As the project started to develop and schedules refined, CMTA was asked to meet the design needs of the entire acute care facility.
Project at a Glance Completion: 2021 Size: 765,000 SF Cost: $557,000,000 Project Type: New Construction Awards / Certifications: – Targeted LEED Silver
St. Elizabeth Cancer Center
St. Elizabeth Healthcare | Edgewood, Kentucky
St. Elizabeth Medical Center is leading the way in cancer care and treatment in the Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati areas by designing and constructing a new, $126 million cancer center addition. The project consists of a 235,000 SF six-story addition that will be accompanied by a 70,000 SF, three-story 140-bed patient tower located on top of the existing fully-functioning fourstory patient tower.
Garren Colvin, CEO of St. Elizabeth Medical Center, wanted this building to be a “Key component in fulfilling our ongoing vision to lead Northern Kentucky to become one of the healthiest communities in America.”
CMTA embraced this and wanted the engineering of the building to be a part of this vision. Examples of this include additional filtration and airflow treatment for the conditioned air of the building and silver ionization water treatment improving the water quality for the patients.
Project at a Glance
Completion: 2021
Size: 305,000 SF
Cost: $126,000,000
Project Type: Addition & Renovation
Diagnostic Imaging Center
Mayo Clinic Health System Mankato, Minnesota
This freestanding diagnostic imaging center replaces the imaging services previously performed at the Mayo Clinic Health System (MCHS) Mankato hospital campus. Formerly a retail space, the center was outfitted to accommodate equipment for X-ray, computed tomography (CT), positron emission tomography and computed tomography (PET-CT), and two magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines. The center also includes patient rooms for scan preparation and a warm and inviting lobby area decorated with plant walls.
Transitioning the diagnostic imaging services to an outpatient freestanding facility offers a more efficient process for staff and patients.
Project at a Glance
Completion: 2022
Size: 14,000 SF
Cost: $10,000,000
Project Type: Renovation
Salem Hospital
Salem Hospital / Mass General Brigham
Salem, Massachusetts
Salem Hospital, a member of Mass General Brigham, is the second largest community hospital system in Massachusetts. With 395 beds, the hospital offers comprehensive medical and surgical services and includes emergency/trauma departments and a birthing center.
The facility undertook a $130 million expansion and renovation project to upgrade their emergency department. This consisted of 118,000 SF of new construction and 123,000 SF of renovation to the existing facility. This project provides the community with a 64,000 SF emergency department, four floors for in-patient psychiatric beds, two levels for medical-surgical in-patient beds, and 48 private rooms.
CMTA also designed a new generator plant consisting of two, 2-megawatt generators
and an expanded 2,800-ton chiller plant to serve the new building and the entire existing campus.
Special energy conservation provisions, such as a new energy efficient central plant, high-performance VAV systems, DDC controls with unoccupied mode airflow setback, and demand control ventilation were incorporated into this LEED Silver facility. The local utility provided an incentive of $1,100,000 for the energy efficient design.
Project at a Glance
Completion: 2019
Size: 241,000 SF
Cost: $130,000,000
Project Type: Addition/Renovation Awards / Certifications: – LEED Silver Certified
Baptist Health Hamburg Hospital
Baptist Health | Lexington, Kentucky
Baptist Health has engaged the design services of CMTA to masterplan and design a new healthcare campus in the Hamburg area of Lexington, Kentucky. This new campus is to be built on the 129-acre greenfield and includes a full 400-bed hospital, full service of outpatient facilities, specialty clinics, and other healthcare facilities. We helped Baptist define their vision of a center for healthcare that does not feel like a hospital. Baptist wants a warm campus that serves the community and is inviting to the people that it serves as a regional destination for great health care service.
The CMTA team evaluated numerous strategies to accomplish a sustainable building that is highly energy-efficient, which is one of Baptist’s core project objectives. CMTA performed sunlight studies on the building to help guide the adding of shading on the windows most affected by direct sunlight. In addition, CMTA designed a heat recovery chiller in the variable flow primary central plant design that will take the waste heat that is produced in the normal process of making chilled water for the campus and use it to provide “free” heat to the campus.
Project at a Glance
Completion: 2024 Estimated (Phase I)
Size: 400 Beds
Cost: $230,000,000
Project Type: New Construction
Novak Center for Children’s Health
University of Louisville | Louisville, Kentucky
For years, it was the goal of the University of Louisville Physicians Group to bring all services together under one roof to provide a single location for high-quality pediatric primary and specialty healthcare. CMTA’s consulting and commissioning teams helped to make that vision a reality by delivering one of the healthiest, most energy-efficient medical office buildings in Kentucky.
The Novak Center is the first medical office building in Kentucky to utilize a highly efficient chilled beam heating and cooling system. The HVAC system is fully ducted and ventilated by a dedicated outside air system, and all recirculated air is local to the
zone filtered with both MERV 8 and MERV 13 filters.
CMTA’s Commissioning team oversaw high-level programming of the control system, verified advanced dewpoint alarm sequences, direct digital temperature controls, building automation, lighting, metering, plumbing, and fire protection.
Project at a Glance
Completion: 2018
Size: 176,000 SF
Cost: $48,000,000
Project Type: New Construction Awards / Certifications: LEED Gold
Cancer Treatment & Ambulatory Surgery Center
UK Healthcare | Lexington, Kentucky
UK’s existing Markey Cancer Center has experienced a 57% increase in patient load in recent years, this project will expand patient care services and ease access to the facility that serves all of central and eastern Kentucky by constructing a new cancer treatment and ambulatory surgery center on the south end of UK’s campus, adjacent to the existing medical center, and connected to Pavilion A via an elevated pedestrian bridge over South Limestone.
Currently in design, the project will provide approximately 560,000 SF of clinical space support a state-of-the-art ambulatory cancer treatment center including infusion space, procedure rooms, diagnostic and therapeutic imaging services, pharmacy, retail, outpatient clinics, meeting spaces, and associated support spaces. The project includes a 2,085vehicle parking structure and a loading/service dock intended to serve the cancer and ambulatory facility. In addition to building design, there is extensive site and roadway development and significant expansion of campus utility infrastructure.
Project at a Glance
Completion: 2025 Estimated
Size: 560,000 SF
Cost: $500,000,000
Project Type: New Construction
Riverview Health Westfield Hospital
Riverview Health | Westfield, Indiana
The project team was tasked to design a full-service facility that included 20 private patient rooms, a combined urgent care emergency department, and state-of-the-art surgery rooms. The upper floors of the facility include outpatient services. This design was required to meet the owner’s sustainability goals, while maintaining brand consistency.
The outstanding energy results of Riverview Health’s Westfield Hospital match its beauty. Comparing the ENERGY STAR hospital portfolio manager to a median hospital, this facility utilizes almost half the energy. This facility’s energy costs are around $2 per SF, while the average median facility would use nearly $4 per SF. Westfield Hospital has been requested by the American Society of Healthcare Engineers to discuss the methodology used to have a hospital performing with an EUI of less than 100.
Project at a Glance Completion: 2018
Size: 108,000 SF
Cost: $35,000,000
Project Type: New Construction Awards / Certifications: – AIA Healthcare Design, 2019
CMTA provided great energy modeling data to ensure the financial performance of the geothermal system. Now that the system has been in operation for a year, its energy use is extremely low, and we are realizing the predicted return on the investment.— Scott Tripp, Riverview Health
Madigan Army Medical Center
USACE Little Rock, Madigan Healthcare System
Joint Base Lewis McChord - Tacoma, Washington
Selected to renovate the Army’s secondlargest hospital in the world, Madigan Army Medical Center, CMTA proudly provided MEP/Fire Protection engineering to update the 1,233,000 SF facility.
Although the facility has been meticulously maintained over the years, the design team brings decades of expertise to this project. In typical CMTA fashion, we challenged conventional thinking and offered innovative, high-value solutions to the government.
The existing emergency system was 480 volt, and if left at that, it would drastically expand the amount of equipment needing to be replaced due to this equipment being unable to handle the fault current.
The design team’s solution utilizes 13.8 KV medium voltage to reduce the fault current (safer), limits the equipment impacted (lower first costs), and helps maintain operations in the critical hospital facility that must remain operational 24/7/365 (and also lower first cost).
The design team used this opportunity to modernize the system by paralleling the utility company to simplify the monthly testing requirements without outages. The resulting system is safe, cost-effective, resilient, and redundant.
Project at a Glance Completion: 2021
Size: 1,233,000 SF
Cost: $42,000,000
Project Type: Renovation
BMC Cogeneration Plant
Boston Medical Center | Boston, Massachusetts
CMTA’s knowledge and attention to detail made this difficult project a major success with energy savings of $1.5M. Thanks to their expertise, we have the most resilient hospital cogen plant in Boston.
— Bob Biggio, Boston Medical Center
Boston Medical Center’s (BMC) main objectives for a cogeneration plant were to reduce energy cost, reduce their carbon footprint, and increase the resiliency of their inpatient care buildings, totaling 1.5 million SF during a major campus consolidation effort. A single 2 Megawatt internal combustion engine cogen system offered BMC the best return on investment and enough power to keep their most critical inpatient care buildings energized and heated in the event of an extended normal electric power outage or another catastrophic event. This cogen system provides $1.5M of annual operating savings.
As significant energy reductions are a cornerstone goal for BMC, so is carbon neutrality. As a result, BMC engaged in the largest collaborative power purchase agreement (PPA) in the United States. 16 megawatts of the 60 megawatt solar field is allocated to BMC to make BMC a zero-energy campus. Through the cogen, PPA, and campus consolidation strategies, BMC has reduced its carbon footprint by 90% since 2011.
Project at a Glance
Completion: 2019
Size: 1,500,000 SF
Cost: $13,500,000
Project Type: Renovation Awards / Certifications: Zero Energy/Carbon Neutral
Practice Greenhealth: Top 25 Green Hospital Nationally Becker’s 60 Greenest Hospitals in America
Welia Health Hospital
Welia Health | Mora, Minnesota
The Welia Health (formerly FirstLight Health System) hospital renovation and addition were completed to enhance the overall patient experience. As a leading healthcare services provider in East-Central Minnesota and Western Wisconsin, it was critical that changes and improvements were made to accommodate the community’s growth and reflect medical and technological advancements being made in the medical community.
The various additions include updates to the birthing center, physical therapy,
emergency department, inpatient pharmacy, intensive care unity, and surgery, imaging, and infusions areas.
The campus also has new parking areas, a courtyard, a relocated helipad, and improved campus access from MN Hwy 65.
Project at a Glance Completion: 2021
Size: 120,000 SF
Cost: $52,000,000
Project Type: Renovation & Addition
Major Health Partners Medical Center
Major Health Partners | Shelbyville, Indiana
In preparation for patient volume increase, Major Health Partners (MHP) needed an upgraded facility that provided streamlined services and future flexibility. The resulting 299,300 SF, full-service facility features 32 medical surgical beds, 8 ICU beds, 36 holding rooms, an emergency department, labor and delivery suite, radiology department and surgical suite with four operating rooms and one C-section room. The 2nd floor consists of medical office suites and outpatient services. In addition, the facility hosts a full-service kitchen with dining, and attaches to the existing cancer center.
Throughout the hospital, “intentional adjacencies” make operations smoother, leading to better care. One example includes positioning the emergency department next to the imaging department in order to position the centralized CT scanner room and accommodate patient flows from both departments.
Despite more than doubling the square footage of the old hospital, the new building significantly reduces energy usage. Jeff Williams, vice president of facility operations, credits this success to a number of energy efficiency measures designed and implemented into the new MHP Medical Center. Achieving an initial Energy Star Rating of 97 puts the MHP Medical Center as one of the top ten energy efficient hospitals in the Midwest. Williams credited CMTA for a highly energy efficient physical plant design.
Project at a Glance
Completion: 2016
Size: 299,000 SF
Cost: $88,000,000
Project Type: New Construction