Making Room for the Mountain View Clinic

New life is being breathed into the lot of land in Mountain View, CA, that has been sitting dormant for a decade and was formerly home to the Emporium department store. In late February, DPR joined the Camino Medical Group (CMG), a division of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, an affiliate of Sutter Health, Mountain View Mayor Matt Neely and neighborhood representatives at the nine-acre site to cheer on CMG CEO Richard Slavin, M.D., as he started the demolition process using a crawler excavator. CMG’s new 250,000-sq.-ft. out-patient medical center and 1,100-stall parking garage are being built using lean construction techniques. Derived from Toyota’s lean production methodology, lean construction emphasizes early involvement of all parties, reliability of commitments and scheduling, and minimization of waste. To achieve this, DPR is using 4D modeling tools to link designs to the schedule and check for design “clashes” before construction begins. Additionally, all of the Emporium’s concrete will be recycled. By reusing just a portion of the Emporium’s concrete on site, the rest is being shipped to a quarry, an anticipated $450,000 will be saved in transportation, material and landfill costs.

Playing a Part

When the devastating tsunami struck South Asia late last year, DPR employees, like people around the world, felt a tremendous sense of responsibility to help the survivors rebuild their homes and restore their lives. Responding to a fundraising challenge made by DPR’s Management Committee, DPR contributed $50,000 and set up a program that would match employees’ contributions dollar-for-dollar up to a total of $50,000 to the AmeriCares Tsunami Relief Fund. DPR employees raised $25,000, and a total contribution of $100,000 was made by DPR to the non-profit humanitarian aid organization to help AmeriCares relief efforts. According to an email update, in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, AmeriCares delivered seven airlifts, carrying 160 tons of medicine, emergency supplies and water purification treatments, worth $12 million, to Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India.

Advancements in Healthcare

As facility owners nationwide push to meet the demands created from an increasing aged population and advancements in technology, hospital owners in California have the added responsibility of meeting seismic upgrades mandated by State Bill 1953. Several healthcare providers have determined that replacing facilities with new construction continues to be a better alternative than renovating existing facilities. Most of the analysis shows that the costs of renovation, added to the potential disruption of operations, warrant replacement construction, especially when considering the extended life of a new facility. In the first quarter of this year, DPR was awarded two replacement hospital projects in Northern California for Sutter Health and Catholic Healthcare West (CHW). As the first new hospital to be constructed in Sonoma County in 25 years, the new 300,000-sq.-ft. Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa will include an acute-care hospital, ambulatory care center and medical office building. In Redwood City, CA, for CHW, DPR is on board to construct a new four-story, 160,900-sq.-ft. tower to house new surgery and special procedures departments for Sequoia Hospital. Currently in preconstruction, the Sequoia project includes an underground central utility plant, 625-stall parking garage and seismic work to existing buildings.