The St. Joseph Hospital Patient Care Center offered numerous challenges, all met through a fully integrated partnering approach. The project team completed the new center on time, within budget, and without any claims. Furthermore, the team’s success is highlighted by a Zero recordable safety incident rate.
Healthcare projects in an operational hospital environment require extensive preplanning and preconstruction in order to mitigate any disruption to the existing hospital and to coordinate all of the extensive mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, the California seismic requirements and the myriad of other construction intricacies. The project team for the Patient Care Center had to coordinate not only with one hospital, but two that surrounded the site and connect to the new facility. To complicate pre-construction further, just four months before construction was to begin, the general contractor stepped down and McCarthy Building Companies was hired. In order to start building trust and collaboration among the group, the team held three, week-long partnering sessions that brought everyone up to speed quickly and seamlessly. These sessions successfully turned the disparate groups into a unified team on-track to success.
The projected budget for the project was $203.7 million and the budget forecast at completion is under $195.8 million. The partnering process helped maintain the project budget goals, by identifying issues early in the partnering meetings and resolving all issues at the project level. Additionally, the team’s decision to have an expert from every field on-site at all times was possibly one of the most significant key cost and time saving approaches of the entire project. The effects of this decision were countless and far reaching and in the end, greatly responsible for bringing the project in under-budget.
The project team created strong relationships with one another through developing the skills they learned during team building and Partnering Sessions that will carry with them long into their next endeavors. At the start of the St. Joseph Hospital Patient Care Center project, relationships had to become synchronized very quickly because a new general contractor was brought on board late in the pre-construction process after another general contractor left the team. However, after the Partnering Sessions began, a process was created to form trust and respect among team members that helped streamline procedures, expedite the schedule and achieve the project goals. As a result of this effective partnership, St. Joseph Health System, NBBJ, McCarthy and many of the subcontractors and other project team members are continuing to work together on new projects with prospects for several more in the future. St. Joseph Hospital also held a “Key Ceremony” and a dinner event to thank the project team for a job well done.