Construction Approach Co-Creates Adaptable Spaces, Accomplishes Fast-Track Schedule for New Banner Estrella Medical Center

When the design and construction team first came together with Banner Health to plan the Banner Estrella Medical Center project in Phoenix, AZ, they identified two key goals early on: to co-create a “hospital for the future” that incorporates flexible, adaptable spaces, and to deliver it quickly to meet the owner’s current needs. They also developed the vision for the project, which is to “transform the healthcare experience.”

During the team building session that took place in May 2002 and over the course of the last two years, DPR Construction, architects NBBJ and The Orcutt/ Winslow Partnership, and Banner Health created a synergistic environment that focused on meeting the owner’s twin goals of rapid delivery and future flexibility. As a result, while this 172-bed hospital provides a full array of services and departments in a healing environment, its basic design and the way construction is being delivered in many ways more closely resembles that of a speculative office building or laboratory space than the typical medical facility.

Set on a 50-acre site in Phoenix, the new 452,000-sq.-ft. acute care hospital will offer emergency, inpatient, outpatient, diagnostic, obstetric, and cardiac services, including open-heart surgery. To achieve the aggressive 30-month design and construction schedule (a full five to nine months shorter than typical construction of a similar facility), the team took the same approach as they would a speculative office building, completing the core and shell several months prior to interior design. DPR is currently finishing out the interior spaces, much like completing the tenant improvements in a corporate office building project. The facility, which broke ground in February 2003, is on track to be turned over to the owner this September.

The hospital’s design also incorporates a level of flexibility more often associated with a laboratory or speculative office space, allowing easy reconfiguration and remodel to accommodate the changing face of healthcare in the years ahead. On each level, mechanical and electrical shafts are located off to the side and away from circulation, with medical gases and HVAC systems designed in looped configurations. This creates a wide open space in which to locate various departments and to redesign the space as the owner’s needs change in the future. The typical floor plate in the diagnostic department, for example, features a 230 x 280 ft. open area for circulation along the south side. Elevators are situated on the east and west sides, and the electrical, telephone, data, HVAC and piping shafts are located on the north and south sides of each floor. Stairs are located at the four corners. The result is 180 x 280 ft. of open center space broken only by building columns.

“When we want to go in and change the space in 15 years, the architecture and design in the rooms will not be limited by the placement of the mechanical shafts or electrical risers,” comments Project Manager Gerry DeWulf. This flexibility is particularly critical given the continuing changes in medical care and how it is delivered, such as the growing emphasis in the cardiac area on non-invasive surgery as opposed to the more traditional open heart surgery.

Another major hospital design trend reflected in Banner Estrella Medical Center is the emphasis on larger, private patient rooms and increased amenities. One unique aspect of the team’s efforts to involve the owner and various end users in the design and construction process was DPR’s creation of extremely detailed mock-ups of these patient rooms prior to construction last fall. Using the only available space, which was a closed room, the project team went to great lengths to create an accurate and detailed look and feel of how the end product would look, down to blowing up a picture of the view from one of the building’s windows and including it in the mock-up room. As a result, the doctors, nurses, and other end users were able to provide feedback, and adjustments could be made before the spaces were actually built out.