Architectural importance can exist at a variety of levels on a design-build project. Depending on surrounding circumstances, particularly those that involve time and money, it is always different.
When the St. Joseph Hospital’s Center for Cancer Prevention and Treatment and Medical Office Building began receiving patients in July, it served as a stark example of how architectural considerations play one of the most important roles in construction.
It was the culmination of the design-build partnership of McCarthy Building Companies and TAYLOR, a healthcare, architecture and interior design firm.
With TAYLOR as executive architect of the project, which includes a medical office building and cancer center, the need for architectural specifics was never more crucial.
“Oncology patients — those that have been touched by cancer — are kind of a unique demographic, in a sense that there’s just a heightened concern, kind of like a children’s hospital … the experience that they have within the facility, given the length of time they have to spend in the facility, is really critical,” says Neal Rinella, AIA, principal-in-charge for TAYLOR. “It’s really important to bring in a supportive environment.”
The unique equipment, systems and patient considerations all provide challenges but are ones TAYLOR is familiar with.
Initially, the project wasn’t design-build. There had been a different design team and they had to inherit bridging documents in the transition. And as a team, they responded to those documents, Rinella says.
This can pose some challenges initially.
“There’s sometimes a gap between what the bridging documents represent and what the owners’ perception or memory was with regard to what they were supposed to be getting within the project,” Rinella says. “And it’s not to pass judgment on either the bridging documents or the owner, but it is just the natural tendency for that gap to occur.”
But as the project moved forward, the design-build process helped bring a lot of its aspects together, he says.
“With St. Joseph’s, we had various use of consultants; many were actually brought in as trade partners under McCarthy’s contract,” he says. “And we worked with that as we would have our consultants, but in this case, they weren’t just designers, they were actually the subcontractors with the design team.”
Rinella says that collaboration is important on any type of project, but with design-build, everyone has the same outlook through the project from start to finish, which can be a big advantage.
In the end, longevity and experience served as a backbone to the projects completion. TAYLOR specializes in hospitals, medical facilities and child development centers. Their partnership with McCarthy Building Companies was just one of multiple experiences that have made both companies leaders in medical facility construction.
For more information, visit www.taa1.com and www.mccarthy.com.