Out-of-the-Box Thinking Produces Unique Research Center

Washington University in St. Louis set some tough challenges when they asked for a specially designed building to enable scientists from different disciplines to better work together in order to rapidly translate basic research discoveries into better ways to care for patients.

"This was most unusual," said James Walsh, vice president of the Cannon Design, the architect for the project. "There are only a handful of buildings in the country that have this function," he said. Cannon Design has an extensive practice designing health care and research facilities.

The new building, dubbed the BJC Institute of Health at Washington University, was destined to become the centerpiece of the Washington University School of Medicine campus - both literally and figuratively. As constructed, the new building sits at the center of the campus, at the southwest corner of Euclid Avenue and Children's Place, directly across the street from the McDonnell Pediatric Research Building, and it is not easy to overlook. Rising 11 stories from the ground and encompassing 675,000 square feet of space, it is the largest building ever constructed on the medical school campus.

Functionally, Washington University expects the building to serve as "the hub" for efforts to translate basic research into patient care. It will provide space for five newly created Interdisciplinary Research Centers (IRCs), each of which addresses a disease-specific area - cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative diseases, infectious diseases or membrane excitability diseases - and each includes researchers from several scientific disciplines and academic departments. Two medical school departments - pathology and immunology and obstetrics and gynecology - also are getting laboratory space in the new building. Scientists began moving into the building in late February 2010.

The research laboratories occupy the to five floors of the building. The sixth (or middle) floor houses the building's mechanical and electrical systems. The first five floors are flexible shell space for future expansion by Barnes-Jewish Hospital and for a future campus-wide kitchen, dining hall, and servery.

This unusual project hosts several unusual features, including:

• a subterranean loading dock capable of receiving up to nine tractor-trailers at one time and reached by a new traffic tunnel underneath Euclid Avenue;

• 12 different skin types that function as a single system to keep out the weather;

• 36 miles of low voltage wiring to serve the data and conferencing needs of the laboratories;

• the use of 100 percent outside air in the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system instead of recycled air.

Unusual projects can present unusual challenges in design and construction and that was the case with the BJC Institute of Health.

Don't Stop The Train

Walsh said the chief challenge was building the facility over Metrolink, an active commuter rail line, without causing a halt in train service. The site for the BJC Institute of Health formerly was occupied by a parking garage. Most of the garage had been demolished, but not that portion that spanned the rail line, because of the added difficulty of demolishing the structure without interfering with rail traffic.

At first, the owner and architect tried to avoid that challenge. "We had host of ideas, including going much taller and not going over track, but essentially the project is center of campus and we wanted to use as much of the real estate was we could, and that meant going over the track," Walsh said. So Cannon Design together with structural engineer OES designed a building structural system that would span the train track.

S.M. Wilson & Co., the construction manager, came up with notion of how to build over the train track and demolish the existing structure based on how they sequenced the job. They decided to build around and over the garage to the second level of the new structure. "That took level one off of the critical path," said Bill Wagner, project executive for S.M. Wilson. Once the new structure was in place, they installed a gantry crane on the underside of the second level's floor slab and used it to dismantle the old parking garage from above and then install the new building's first level in its place. All while, new construction was taking place higher up.
"That saved us a year of conventional construction," Wagner said.
In the end, the demolition of the parking garage and construction of the 11-story high-rise and underground receiving dock was completed in just 27 months, despite losing 59 work days to rain. While the unusual sequencing contributed to the fast schedule, so did the bidding and management of the project. In order to speed the schedule, the project was divided into 14 design and bid packages, with some packages under construction while others were still in design. The result, Wagner said, was 14 different schedules encompassing more than 5,500 activities by more than 200 different contractors. It was a mammoth job of management, but one that S.M. Wilson performed successfully using CMiC and Primavera Contractor software for project administration and project control.

Answers, Then Action

It took more than schedules to successfully conclude such a mammoth and unusual project within the fast track schedule and budget allotted, however. It took a particular frame of mind. This project team understood that assumptions were booby traps for the unwary. They understood that knowing was better than not knowing, so they put effort and spending into accumulating information about the site and their building materials before starting work.

Exploratory efforts began early. Concrete Strategies had the job of installing more than 130 concrete piers for the building's foundation. But in order to protect the owner's budget and the fast track schedule from unforeseen conditions, Geotechnology, Incorporated probed each pier before drilling. Jeff Klein, senior project manager for Geotechnology, said that with probe holes the team could determine the rock consistency and the exact pier depth necessary at each pier site, which determined the exact amount of time and money needed for each of the piers. The piers ranged from 30 to 60 inches in diameter ran to depths of 40-to-60 feet. With that information, the team then determined that they required three drills, instead of the two initially budgeted, in order to maintain the project schedule.

The plans called for using 12 different materials on the exterior of the building. Since the use of those materials was not fully detailed, S.M. Wilson couldn't be sure they would properly work together as one skin and as part of the building envelope. "We hired an independent testing company to assemble the skin types and see if they functioned as a unit and withstood the elements," said Wagner. The testing company simulated severe weather with a jet engine and water to see how well the assemblage of different skin types worked.

Ross & Baruzzini, the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineer, got involved early to understand how BJC and the Washington University School of Medicine would operate the building and where would be the waste heat. The owners wanted the project team to aim for gold certification in the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) building rating system. Although there are many steps to reaching that goal, Ross & Baruzzini's role was crucial - the building could not attain gold certification if it was not energy efficient.

Handling The Heat

Safety codes and regulations require that laboratories use 100 percent outside air. As a result, lab facilities consume up to10 times more energy than comparably sized commercial spaces.

Ross & Baruzzini designed a heat recovery system to cut energy costs at the BJC Institute of Health. The heat recovery system preheats incoming fresh air with heat captured from exhaust air as it leaves the building.

That's not that unusual - the industrial world has been grabbing waste heat for a long time, said Marijin Braadbaart, director of commissioning at Ross & Baruzzini, but it is still uncommon in offices or other commercial buildings.

"The reason we don't see a lot more recovery systems is because the HVAC system is usually designed in isolation," he said. "Complex systems to achieve efficiency require an interdisciplinary approach. New technology needs to be installed in conjunction with and in recognition of other systems," he said.

What is unusual, is that Ross & Baruzzini also designed a heat recovery system to warm water. Ross & Baruzzini took advantage of two facts about the building: the chiller would be operating year round and the domestic hot water in a laboratory facility has fewer uses than in some other facilities, and so does not need to be as hot. "We designed the system for lower temperature hot water and use waste heat to warm the water," said Jason Atkinson, senior project manager for energy and sustainability at Ross & Baruzzini.

The project required forty-four weeks of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing system coordination in order to install the systems. Six electrical, two mechanical, two fire protection and two plumbing contractors were required to handle the work.
Wagner said that S.M. Wilson was able to deliver the project the project for $207 million, millions less than the owner had budgeted.

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