Completed three months ahead of schedule and headed toward accepting its first patients on February 22, 2012, the Indu & Raj Soin Medical Center in Beavercreek, Ohio, opened its doors to a construction tour on January 30.
General contractor Danis Building Construction led the tour of the new 80-bed, 276,000-square-foot hospital that broke ground in November 2009 and was completed in November 2011. Originally projected for a completion date this month, the team fast-tracked the project and used a number of tools to shorten the schedule.
The $120 million facility, designed by HOK and Jain Malkin Inc., is part of the Kettering Health Network and touts what will be one of only five universal care units (UCUs) in the country, where patients can be held for up to 24 hours between diagnostics and surgery, for pre- and post-operative care, or for emergency care in ED overflow space.
The facility is a new hospital for Kettering in the Beavercreek area—a growing suburb of Dayton, Ohio—where the system recognized the need for additional health services. Also being constructed on the site is a medical office building to house physician offices and retail space.
Tour highlights
Working from the bottom up, team members featured the facility’s chiller and generator rooms, where energy efficiency was a key component in the overall design of the hospital. Redundant equipment was built for backup measures and features two massive diesel generators housed below grade, which adds to the survivability of mechanical equipment in cold weather.
“We’re basically in a concrete bunker here,” says Danis Project Director Jim Albertson.
Also included are heat recovery, stacked mechanical shafts and communications rooms, as well as load diagnostic software for maintenance staff to identify where energy loads are greatest.
Moving through staff and patient areas, the team highlighted Danis’s materials management on the project. Because the facility was new and not replacing an existing hospital in the Beavercreek area, there was no available materials staff, so the construction firm oversaw that project component as well.
“It’s about a four-month process from when you start getting pieces,” Albertson says. “That in and of itself is a huge undertaking when opening a new facility.”
