Clear Lake Heart Hospital Level 5 and 6 Buildout | Clear Lake, Texas

Within an occupied, fully-functioning heart specialty hospital, DPR completed the finish-out and renovation of 120,000-sq.-ft. of patient areas including 48,000-sq.-ft. of med/surg rooms, isolation rooms and pharmacy on the 5th and 6th floors, and 72,000-sq.-ft. of remodels on the 1st and 3rd floors including dialysis, CT scan, and housekeeping, and telemetry. The project scope also includes extensive modifications to the hospital's pneumatic tube system for medication delivery to nurse's stations.

At the owner's request, the project was designed in Revit (a building information modeling, or BIM, tool). DPR used the model to coordinate mechanical and electrical scopes, and to coordinate where plumbing would be installed in the core spaces relative to the existing plumbing. During design, the team performed clash detection and conflict resolution exercises. A total of 271 issues were identified, 147 of which were resolved in the model during design. The rest were minor conflicts resolved by subcontractors in the field without additional costs or schedule impacts.

The model was also used to prefabricate the headwall systems, saving approximately ten weeks on the overall schedule and a reducing the cost of headwall installation by 14 percent.

All construction took place alongside daily hospital operations. A man lift was installed on the side of the building to lift materials to the top floors without disturbing patients. The team coordinated daily with the nursing staff to plan work around patient needs, especially those on the fourth floor who are directly below a full-floor finish-out. TDH inspections were phased to accommodate the hospital's need for early occupancy of some areas.