by Shane Henson — July 22, 2011—Construction on the new $230 million East Tower at Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora, Colorado reached a notable milestone in July with the topping out of the 10-story structure. The expansion is being constructed by the joint venture team of McCarthy Building Companies Inc. and Gerald H. Phipps in conjunction with design partners H+L Architecture and ZGF Architects under an integrated project delivery tri-party agreement.
The new East Tower will connect to the existing 1,440,000-square-foot, 298-bed Children’s Hospital Colorado facility built by the same team, which opened to patients just three years ago.
Construction of the new 355,000-square-foot addition is currently on schedule to be complete in late 2012. Upon completion, the facility will connect to the existing hospital on the north face of the outpatient building and the east face of the hospital building. The facility will have the capacity to provide an additional 200 beds and will be home to cancer care, heart and rehabilitation medicine, and an advanced maternal/fetal medicine center. In total, Children’s Hospital Colorado’s main facility at the Anschutz Medical Campus will then have a footprint of 1.8 million square feet.
The East Tower project is LEED registered through the U.S. Green Building Council and will pursue LEED certification upon completion. The team is currently coordinating aggressive material tracking and recycling of demolition and construction materials and completing full energy modeling of the East Tower addition to ensure the most advanced building enclosure and efficient mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems.
With construction underway, the team is using Bluebeam document control for collaborative document management and is utilizing innovative mobile kiosks in the field to enable all field staff to have access to this information in real time. Unlike the use of only tablet PC’s and iPads, these mobile kiosks are available to all personnel on the jobsite when they need them. Rapid changes are tracked and documented as they are developed with the design team and implemented in the field to minimize rework and improve overall project efficiency.
