Putting Their Hearts into It
Crews Undaunted by Hospital Construction Setbacks
By Nicole Achs Freeling
The nine-story addition to Minneapolis’sAbbott Heart Hospital, completed inJanuary 2005, represents a major leapforward for the city’s cardiac care. But creatingthis 400,000-square-foot upgrade, whichincludes four cardiovascular operating rooms,eight new CV labs, three new EP labs, a helipad,and an expanded emergency department,was not for the faint of heart.
The project encountered a host of challenges and setbacks, including redesigns, a flood that destroyed three months of work, and the special demands of working amid a functioning cardiac unit. Yet with careful scheduling, teamwork, and persistence, construction crews addressed these challenges and finished the project on time.
Advanced Planning
The Abbott Hospital cardiovascular expansion includes 128 beds for cardiac patients, expanded emergency facilities, and increased access to the latest diagnostic and treatment equipment. “The first phase of the project was basically built on top of the existing cardiac intensive-care unit,” says Troy Blizzard, Project Manager for M.A. Mortenson, the project’s general contractor. “There was a pre-existing one-story unit, and we built nine stories of concrete and steel right on top of it.”
Construction activities were planned well in advance, and supervisors stayed in close communication with the hospital. “They could call us whenever they needed and say, ‘You’re making too much noise’ or ‘There’s too much vibration,’ and we would stop what we were doing,” says Blizzard.
According to Owner Representative Gene Torrey, designing the electrical work was a particularly complicated process. “We have a lot of emergency power requirements, and we have different branches of power,” he says. “The exit lights are on the life safety system; the operating room lights are on the critical branch; and the air-handling units are on the equipment system. You really need to understand what you are doing to ensure you don’t hook something up to the wrong system.”
As the project’s electrical contractor, Parsons Electric worked closely with the hospital to decipher how to get necessary power to the building. They also worked with medical equipment manufacturers to coordinate proper electrical connections before construction began. In addition, Parsons was able to value engineer the lighting package, saving approximately 15 percent of the project’s lighting budget.
The trickiest part of the electrical installation involved tapping into the hospital’s main power distribution system. It was, of course, vital to ensure no power was lost when the system was turned off. The first step, says Parsons Project Manager Rich Ross, was to pinpoint exactly what the system fed and what disruptions would occur when it was shut down.
To minimize power interruptions, Parsons used the hospital’s emergency generator and provided a separate generator as a backup. Parsons completed the work in three hours during the middle of the night, while the hospital operated on emergency power. “From a patient’s point of view, only a few light fixtures were not operational,” Ross says.
Team Efforts Pay Off 
Several months into the project, a surprise thunderstorm dumped 6 inches of rain in less than an hour. With the city’s storm drains overwhelmed, water surged into the streets and straight into the hospital basement, where the main electrical service, chiller system, cooling pumps, air handler, and fire pumps were located.
“All this equipment was 6 feet under water,” Ross says. “It looked like a huge swimming pool. The air-handling unit was floating on the surface for a while until it filled up with water and sank.”
It took days to pump out the water and then several more for an environmental services firm to scrub out the room. The equipment, which represented more than three months of installation work, was a total loss. “It’s demoralizing when you finish the race only to have to come back and start over again,” Torrey says, “but no one complained.”
Parsons worked with suppliers to expedite the replacement process, acquiring in eight weeks what usually takes three to four months. The company also brought in larger crews to make up lost time. “Since we were so far ahead at the time, we were able to put everything back in place without affecting the project schedule,” Ross says.
Schedule changes also posed a challenge. Almost a year into the process, the owner asked to start using the helipad six months ahead of the building’s completion. During construction, the hospital used an interim helipad, which involved transferring critically ill patients to ambulances and then driving them to the ER. The hospital was understandably anxious to have the new helipad, which would allow them to bring patients directly into the cardiac-care unit.
Meeting this request meant finishing most of the other work much earlier. Before the helipad could open, the main elevators, emergency power system, emergency lighting, fire alarms, and sprinkler systems all had to be operational. “It took a real team effort between Mortenson and our field staff,” Ross says.
Staying the Course
Several of Parsons’ routine practices paid off when challenges arose during this project. One of these practices is the company’s dedication to preplanning. The firm draws up installation plans for specific rooms and complicated areas that show where every light switch and outlet will go and then delivers these details to electricians before installation begins. “That way, coordination issues are resolved and layout time is reduced, which allows the foreman to focus more energy on field productivity,” Ross says. Such preplanning permitted the company to stay on schedule and minimize disruptions.
Parsons’ dedication to on-time completion was evident to Bob Steffel, Mortenson’s Senior Project Manager. “We were extremely fortunate to have Parsons on this project,” he says. “Because of their customer-based approach, our client’s needs were met, despite the difficulties we encountered.”
