Children's Hospital ER/OR, New Orleans

The team of architect Eskew+Dumez+Ripple and contractor Brice Building Co. Inc., both of New Orleans, integrated form and function during construction of the Children's Hospital Emergency Room and Operating Room.

From the multi-colored floors with triangles, circles, and squares intricately mingled into the patterns to the rich maple hardwood registration desks, the design intent of the hospital is clear - provide a visually rich environment that soothes visitors and appeals to the children with its abundant use of color.

Design and construction goals combined with maintaining a fully functional hospital led to some innovation and extremely close coordination among hospital staff, design team and contractor personnel.

The contract documents contained a very detailed, precise phasing plan that had to be strictly adhered to in order to maintain hospital operations. At several points during construction, Brice Building Co. discussed alternate phasing options with the hospital in order to maintain functionality and also facilitate construction operations.

In addition to providing the owner with the full cooperation of subcontractors during discussions involving tie-ins and unforeseen conflicts, Brice was able to value engineer nearly a $236,000 credit that was shared between the owner and contractor. Also, due to the very limited construction staging areas, working relationships between field supervisory personnel and hospital staff had to be strongly established.

During steel erection, access was routed differently almost on a daily basis in order to ensure safety for visitors and pedestrians entering the hospital. At one point, spotters were used to temporarily halt erection while pedestrians entered and exited the building.

Also, field supervisory personnel worked closely with hospital staff to ensure that speedy mobilizations and demobilizations were executed to accommodate an already limited parking availability.

With nearly 180,000 visitors entering the doors annually, a majority of the work was hinged around maintaining access to the emergency room and MRI for the duration of the project. In addition, countless tie-ins had to be made to the central plant's mechanical, electrical and control systems. These tie-ins had to be coordinated with the hospital on a daily basis to prevent interference with critical hospital operational systems.

Tropical storms Lili and Isabel struck at the most inopportune times and, despite a few unavoidable small leaks, no considerable damage was done and hospital life care systems were never once compromised. Several times during the pile driving operations, Brice was directed to shut down due to open-heart surgery only feet away, in existing surgery suites. Several shutdowns were scheduled after hours and work was scheduled in the middle of the night in order to perform critical medical gas tie-ins.

Hundreds of steel beams weighing tons were delicately lifted above the existing emergency room wing and MRI to erect the new structure. Electrical systems had to be tied into existing systems with minimal effect on non-construction areas. Fire ratings and emergency egress had to be maintained at all times during construction, while at the same time not hindering access to the non-construction areas of the hospital.