Building Around Care Plans: Renovating Hospitals Without Disruption

The population of Dallas has grown fivefold in the last two decades, making it one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities. But with rapid growth also come growing pains.

Hospital infrastructure hasn't kept up with the growing population, and healthcare systems are turning to renovating existing facilities to expand access to care.

“The explosion in population in the Dallas market is greater than anyone could have ever anticipated,” said Roman Buckner, vice president for the south central region at general contractor McGough Construction. “Some area hospitals may be more than 50 years old and have become landlocked over time.”

When horizontal expansion isn’t possible, vertical growth and renovation become appealing options, despite being limited by what the original foundation of a building was designed to accommodate, Buckner said.

“Still, renovation may be a more cost-effective and faster option than going through the arduous process of designing a new hospital and constructing it from the ground up,” Buckner said. “There may be fewer upfront costs, and a tremendous benefit if the existing structure can support the needs of the intended healthcare functions.”

Keeping Construction Separate

Airports, museums and amusement parks don’t shut down during construction but instead cordon off certain areas and still aim to deliver a seamless visitor experience.

Hospital administrators often prefer to adopt a similar playbook during major renovation projects. The goal is to enable hospital buildings to continue to serve patients in an uninterrupted manner.

McGough has developed a specialty in the complex choreography of executing critical upgrades of a working hospital while minimizing disruption to staff and patients.

“We can do major work without turning the healthcare facility into a construction site,” Buckner said. “That would be a major distraction and dissatisfier to those who are providing care and those who are receiving that care.”

Managing Flow Of Services

One of the most critical challenges these kinds of projects face is the dust, debris, noise and vibrations that construction generates.

“None of those aspects agree with a hospital setting,” Buckner said. “Our construction managers specialize in keeping the environment free of construction byproducts that could compromise the health, safety and well-being of patients and staff and healthcare providers.”

To manage this flow of services and all the other moving parts of such complex projects, communication between the construction team and hospital leadership is “far and away the most important element,” he said.

“Everyone has to be on the same page, to the minute, on what will be taking place, when and where,” Buckner said. “We often have to make modifications to existing utilities, like medical gas lines, during work. These critical services can affect operations in a different corridor or floor, so strict adherence to communication planning is critical.”

McGough Construction has a team highly experienced in healthcare environments, including several certified health care constructor professionals, or CHCs, whose expertise ensures a deep understanding of the unique and regulated nature of clinical spaces.

“Our experts work closely with hospital administrators and healthcare providers to create transition plans and to map out how construction will be phased,” Buckner said. “We work together to come up with the best and safest solutions.”

Minimizing Disruptions To Care

In addition to team members with extensive healthcare construction experience and credentials, the firm’s staff includes multidisciplinary teams of architects, engineers, 3D modelers, virtual design coordinators, and quality assurance and safety professionals, Buckner said.

This enables the firm to conduct nondestructive exploration of the existing environment and to model everything ahead of time, he said. It also conducts studies of what equipment an existing facility supports and determines the accuracy of existing design documents.

“We gather all the information before the first hammer is swung,” Buckner said. “Virtual modeling allows us to get the schedule tight and well-orchestrated so a given hospital function doesn’t have to be offline any longer than absolutely necessary.”

A key element of the planning process is determining where patients can be relocated to receive care while a portion of the building is vacated and sealed off for construction work, Buckner said.

The McGough Construction approach is guided by the principle that construction is intended to support and work around hospital operations, rather than the expectation that hospital staff work around construction, Buckner said.

“It’s a mindset,” he said. “We’re always listening to our clients and innovating to respond to their needs. Our values are collaboration, listening and genuine care.”

Buckner said that in recent years, in part as a result of the pandemic, more elements of hospital design are being standardized and even prefabricated with flexibility and adaptability in the forefront.

“Hospitals are now being designed with rooms that can have multiple purposes and can quickly be converted in the event of an emergency,” he said. “Future flexibility is baked into the design.”

For a market like Dallas, where the population is experiencing growth on such a significant scale, he said McGough is proud to support the healthcare industry in making it possible to provide the best possible care to the most people.

“These projects are incredibly rewarding,” Buckner said. “We understand the complexity, the sensitivity and the stakes of what this work entails.”

This article was produced in collaboration between McGough Construction and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.