Building the Future of Healthcare
New Bed Tower at Atrium Health's Carolinas Medical Center Campus | Charlotte, NC
The Adult Acute Care New Bed Tower is a transformative 12-story, 1,160,000-sq.-ft. expansion designed to meet the evolving and diverse healthcare needs of the Metro Charlotte community. Strategically integrated with the existing Dickson Tower and David L. Conlan Center at Atrium Health Carolinas Rehabilitation, the new facility will significantly expand Atrium Health’s care capacity.
About The Project
At full occupancy, the New Bed Tower will offer:
- 448 adaptable patient rooms, designed with built-in flexibility to accommodate future technologies
- 38 operating rooms and 16 procedure rooms
- A pod-style emergency department featuring 62 exam rooms
- A new rooftop helipad for rapid transport
- An open core model for inpatient nursing units, enhancing care efficiency and visibility
- Dedicated teammate well-being spaces on every floor
To reduce risk and optimize outcomes, the team is leveraging several innovative construction strategies, including prefabricated bathroom pods, headwalls, multi-trade racks and exterior wall assemblies—all contributing to improved quality, safety and schedule certainty.
Innovative Project Delivery
Cost Certainty
From the outset, the team recognized that a Target Value Delivery (TVD) approach was essential to the project’s success. Achieving cost certainty on a complex eight-year project with a multi-year preconstruction phase posed significant challenges. To support transparent and informed decision-making, the team implemented tools like risk registers and adopted Join, a real-time cost dashboard tool.
Join allows estimates and cost items to be uploaded and evaluated across multiple scenarios, enabling precise and dynamic cost tracking. Join was fully rolled out to the entire project team so that every member could instantly see the cost impact of each decision in real time.
This transparency has been instrumental in keeping the New Bed Tower project on budget, with cost certainty maintained through continuous, informed collaboration.
Prefabrication
The project team implemented several innovative prefabrication strategies to drive improved safety, quality and workforce development. A dedicated prefabrication warehouse, located just over five miles from the job site, was established to construct building components and as a training hub for Goodwill construction apprenticeship students. This controlled environment provides students hands-on trade experience, preparing them for future on-site roles. Many of these apprentices are later hired by DPR’s trade partners, creating a clear pathway into careers in construction.
These workforce training partnerships and community outreach efforts are critical to supporting Atrium Health’s 30% diversity spend goal, and the project is currently on track to meet that target by completion.
DPR’s drywall team also deployed Dusty, an automated layout robot that marks walls—including rated and priority walls—and utilities directly on the slab. By automating this process, the team has significantly increased efficiency and reduced the manpower typically required for layout while enhancing accuracy and consistency across the job site.
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