MOB takes design direction from the main hospital. The DePaul Building was occupied 18 months prior to the completion of the hospital, and patient care was delivered on the campus with the backdrop of the 550,000-square-foot construction of the new MTMC. Once MTMC was completed, how did you support the staff?
Greg: Since many of the staff had been doing their jobs the same way in the same circulation patterns for 20 years, it wasn’t easy for them to embrace a new way of doing things. We had countless sessions with all the staff to ensure that their ideas on standardization were met. We built mockups that mimicked the design of each room and allowed us to move things around easily to come up with the best configurations. We progressed all the way through to a 100% finished mockup that had the floor finishes, the ceiling, the paint colors, and even the devices that would be used. We walked the staff through the mock patient rooms so they could understand the layout before they even moved. Since the hospital could not pause its operations, how did the staff and departments transition over?
Greg: We used a transition planning service and began moving the entire building at 5:30 a.m. on October 2,
starting with existing patients in the ICU, then oncology, then orthopedics. In most cases, ER patients went to the old hospital, but one woman came to the new hospital ER at 4:30 a.m. in labor and refused to go to the existing hospital. They made an exception and admitted her at 5:15 because they didn’t want her to have her baby in the parking lot. Overall, did the transition run smoothly?
Greg: Yes. The transition was really uneventful, and it is a testament to great team planning. In fact, the CEO said he kept waiting for something to happen, but it was so well planned that it ran without a hitch. There was a convoy of ambulances that ran from one hospital to another. They expected it to take all day to move, but they were able to move about 100 patients from the old facility and admit them to the new hospital in about four hours. The development of the new hospital was driven by the Integrated Project Delivery method (IPD). How does this method differ from standard
procedures and what are the advantages of using this process?
Greg: In most hospital developments the owner typically has a contract with the architect and a separate contract with the contractor, which, unfortunately, can produce adversarial relationships if something goes wrong. Each entity tends to think about their own interests and how to shift blame or responsibility. With IPD, the owner, architect, and contractor enter into a single agreement which contractually binds each to the other to essentially create a three-legged stool. With this process, everyone puts the project first. If someone needs help, the other two jump in to support instead of pointing the finger or deflecting. This team attitude permeates the entire project and makes everything run much smoother. This was an enlightening process for us. Decisions made were not just based on design aesthetics, but with input regarding constructability, financial implications, and longevity.
The success of the transition is a testament to great team planning because it was really uneventful...
gresham, smith and partners
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