CSI East Bay-Oakland recently had the opportunity to head across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco for an exciting glimpse at the California Pacific Medical Center’s Van Ness and Geary Campus. The project includes a new 300 bed hospital and a separate medical office building across the street, linked by an underground pedestrian tunnel.  You can see more information about the project at the CPMC website here. Not only did we get to look at the buildings themselves and the construction currently underway, but CSI EBO Chapter President Dan Galvez also attended a Lean Case Study presentation hosted by the Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA)  and the Lean Construction Institute (LCI)

 

Vital Statistics  (via CPMC)

• 100% filtered, unrecirculated outside air system
• Levels: hospital: twelve floors | medical office building: nine floors
• 274 patient beds
• 990,00 square Ft (total between buildings)
• 5 living roof gardens
• 435 parking spaces
• Hospital: LEED certified | medical office building: LEED-Silver certified
• Design: SmithGroup JJR
• Location: Van Ness and Geary | San Francisco, CA

[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m13!1m11!1m3!1d1278.6894956906565!2d-122.42166627216326!3d37.786032664203034!2m2!1f0!2f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!5e1!3m2!1sen!2sus!4v1477525070129&w=600&h=450]

 

Work on the hospital portion of the project began in 2013 and is expected to be completed in 2019. Work on the medical office building began in 2014 and is expected to be completed in 2019. To see a complete schedule of all portions of the project visit the CPMC timeline.

Time lapse video of hospital  construction :

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQP2wJAXhGc&w=560&h=315]

The CPMC website has an extensive selection of cameras monitoring the construction sites which can be manipulated to show different days and times, time lapse and map overlays. It’s definitely worth a look.

 

Building Exterior

 

Lean Case Study Presentation

By CSI East Bay-Oakland President Dan Galvez

 

The presentation was organized by the Design-Build Institute and the Lean Construction Institute.

 

Panos Lampsas discussed his experience leading design and construction teams for Sutter Health on multiple new hospital construction projects using Integrated Project Delivery. Panos stressed communication as the key to successful integrated project delivery. He showed a slide with several key tools for IPD, many of which has small words in parenthesis next to them “(no e-mail)”.  He said it is important for teams to communicate directly, talk to each other about problems, issues, challenges so they can be solved.  He showed a graph of the project budget ($1.3 Billion, by the way) and how they were tracking on cost, contingency use and profit sharing by the team. There was a period of time when the costs were exceeding budget, contingency was used up and there was no money left for profit sharing and he commented, “this is where we were using e-mail too much”, the project did recover later and he said “this is where we started talking to each other again.” Maybe some humor in his comment, but you get the point. Communication, direct communication, is key to project success.

 

Steve Peppler gave an overview of Lean Construction concepts and tools and his 16-year involvement on the project with SmithGroupJJR. He discussed the various iterations of planning early in the project where it involved several city blocks of building demolition and modification, which would result in many years of disruption for Sutter, the patients and city streets. Then the old Jack Tar/Cathedral Hill hotel became available and Sutter was able to purchase the site and plan a new facility at this location instead. SmithGroupJJR worked closely with Sutter and the team trade partners on the design, concurrently working on entitlements with the San Francisco agencies and OSHPD. You may know that the project was in planning for years, was about fully developed, then stopped and was redesigned to address new requirements.

Klaus Berghede talked about Production Planning for the project. The site and each floor of the building is analyzed for the type of activities that need to occur, what each trade needs to accomplish in the area, and then the activities are “leveled” to produce an organized, scheduled, “flow” to the project. Very complex, detailed analysis and planning is required by all involved, and necessary to maximize efficiency in implementation of the work.

Henry Nutt, working for one of the trade partners, showed a video of several interviews with folks who are working on the project and their experience with different aspects of the design and construction effort. Some of the key planning and implementation elements of the project, include the use of BIM by all, prefabrication of material at a warehouse on Treasure Island, with delivery of modular sections of utilities, ductwork, framing, etc. on a just in time basis. Also, use of a site nitrogen system for soldering of piping (used for cleanliness) which eliminated the need for delivery and movement of gas cylinders on the jobsite. And the design and use of a vacuum assisted “portapotty” system with modular units and water for washing, eliminating the need to move regular portapotties around the site and providing a clean environment for the workers.  Many of the ideas shared in Henry’s video came from the workers themselves as ways to improve productivity on the project. Henry’s key words included many of the concepts used for lean construction planning and execution and I think a big word that came through was “respect” for the workers, respect for their ideas and respect for them as part of the team.