News
MGH Down the Home Stretch
November 23, 2010
| We thought we were busy. Massachusetts General Hospital has about 75,000 people walk through its main lobby each day. Thus, completing construction on the newest of its 26 buildings, a $579M, 530k SF in-patient facility just steps from the continuously revolving front door, has required some fleet-footed coordination. |
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| We snapped MGH?s director of planning and construction David Hanitchak, who provided the ?show and tell? on the Lunder Building where construction began in ?08 and will be completed next spring. David says the secret to pulling off this fancy footwork is constant communication between stakeholders. The rhomboid-shaped, glass-clad mid-rise has 10 levels above ground and four below. Its 150 new inpatient beds add nearly 20% to the hospital?s adult inpatient capacity. It has 28 new procedure rooms, 34 private post-procedure recovery slots, and two five-story atria that will be outfitted with hanging greenery. Financing came from operating capital, bonds and philanthropy. David's development team includes NY-based NBBJ architects, Turner Construction, and Leggat McCall Properties as risk managers. |
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| Here's David on a cavernous floor that houses the mechanicals and other building systems. His team is now completing installation of the electrical, plumbing, fire protection, and heating and cooling equipment. In the next few weeks, they'll focus on interior finishes as well as installation of the information systems and major new equipment for testing and treating patients. Equipment will go through dry runs to assure timely approvals by the health department. A simple but major advance is that for the first time in its 200-year history, MGH will have a separate,covered ER entrance. |
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| As for the fancy stuff, the Lunder Building has plenty, like these high tech ORs. David tells us that touch screens all around the room —connected to the latest testing equipment—will allow clinicians to do imaging while patients are still on the table, to see everything that was and wasn't done. The copper shielding on the frame creates the proper environment to store an MRI machine that can be wheeled into the patient undergoing a procedure. Otherwise, patients must be taken to an immobile MRI room, wait for results, and perhaps return to the OR. In the low tech but important category, more single-patient rooms will decrease potential infections. |
