Vegas on a Health Kick
The new $364.9-million hospital is the VA�s largest contract ever awarded.
The U.S. Dept. of Veteran’s Affairs is betting big on Southern Nevada.
The federal agency in charge of soldiers’ health is building its first new hospital in more than 20 years. The 1-million-sq-ft building is going up at 6900 N. Pecos Road in North Las Vegas.
“We look forward to a future of greatly expanded medical care that will meet the needs of Nevada veterans, not just for today, but for generations to come, especially in southern Nevada where we have one of the fastest-growing veteran populations in the country,” VA Secretary Jim Nicholson says in a statement.
The joint-venture team of Bethesda, Md.-based Clark Construction Group and Hunt Construction Group, Scottsdale, Ariz., won the $364.9-million construction contract in September 2008. It’s the largest VA contract ever awarded. About 900 workers from 70 companies will be onsite during the peak of construction activity. Clark is the lead partner under a 55/45 partnership. Baltimore-based RTKL Associates Inc. and JMA, Las Vegas, are the joint-venture architects.
“The VA has built very few new medical campuses over the last 20 to 30 years,” says Scott Rawlings, vice president of RTKL’s health care design group. “They have primarily expanded and upgraded existing facilities and weren’t set up for building new from ground up.”
Building plans took shape after several stakeholder meetings and planning sessions. The seven-story hospital is skinned with blast-proof laminated glass and Trespa-brand smooth-finish metal panels. The ground-level is skirted with a resilient concrete masonry block.
The building rests atop a slab-on-grade foundation with spread footings. It has a steel moment-resisting frame for seismic loading and added ductility, along with a 30- by 30-ft grid of support columns. The structure, which uses 8,000 tons of steel, has concrete-over-metal decking floors that taper in size from 211,000 sq ft up to 51,000 sq ft. San Francisco-based Degenkolb is the structural engineer.
The hospital is a beefy, durable structure designed for a long life. It’s also environmentally friendly, seeking LEED gold certification.
Sustainable components include a high-efficiency mechanical system, natural light, regional building materials, low-flow plumbing fixtures and VOC-free paints and glues.
“These facilities are meant to last for 50 to 100 years,” says Clark/Hunt JV project manager Jesse Doty. “The hospital has backup systems that enable it to stay fully operational for four days without water, power and sewer.”
| VA Hospital Built in Four Phases Phase 1 – Central Plant and Offsite Package ($41 million) Phase 2 – Foundation Package ($9.17 million) Phase 3 – 120-Bed Nursing Home (Design-Build; $47.8 million) Phase 4 – Main Hospital Package ($364.9 million) Activation – 6 to 12 months following construction completion |
The 105-ft-tall building will have 68 patient beds with a lift in each room and a 22-bed mental health facility. It houses $75 million of equipment for comprehensive medical services that include a 16-room radiology suite with...
The new $364.9-million hospital is the VA�s largest contract ever awarded.
...an MRI, PET scanner, x-ray, gamma cameras, dental, mental health, cardiology, prosthetics, audiology and geriatrics. Specialized components consist of three hyperbaric decompression chambers for respiratory patients, plus a computerized axial tomography (CAT) scan machine and other diagnostic equipment.
“Some of the challenges are the technical complexity of the work,” says JMA President Thomas Schoeman. “There are federal regulations and Americans with Disabilities Act requirements, as well as high-tech equipment.”
The hospital uses bright colors as a way-finding system to differentiate departments and services. The first floor has a 25-ft-tall grand lobby with skylights that act as the building’s spine. It’s the organizational center, or hub, from which other components radiate similar to bicycle wheel spokes.
The building’s uniform modular grid pattern allows independent module operation. There are 50 air handlers, for example, for zone climate control.
There are three main ground-level entrances with four-story-tall glass vestibules. One entrance is reserved specifically for ambulance traffic. The building, on 38.7 acres, is surrounded by a landscaped asphalt apron with 2,094 surface parking spots. Locally based Las Vegas Paving Corp. is the paving contractor.
The hospital is serviced by a two-level, 47,000-sq-ft central plant building with three boilers, four chillers, two cooling towers and five engine-generators. There are 285 mi of electrical conduit. Squeezing all the necessary ductwork, pipes and wiring overhead has required 12 ft of ceiling space in some instances.
“There is a lot more ductwork here than you would find in a normal office, with medical gas, air and added utilities,” Clark/Hunt JV project executive Phil Sloyan says. “We have been using 3-D coordination to figure out how to make it all fit. We have had to resize things as we go. It’s like a giant jigsaw puzzle.”
Yet the hospital still plans to finish by the end of 2011. It marks the fourth and final phase for the VA’s new 151-acre Southern Nevada medical campus. Other contracts consist of infrastructure site upgrades as well as a 120-bed, 100,000-sq-ft nursing home being design-built by Clark with Carter Burgess (now a unit of Pasadena-based Jacobs Engineering Group Inc.).
The new hospital supplements existing services for Nevada’s 246,000 veterans. VA operates 10 outpatient clinics in the state, four of them in the Las Vegas valley. It provided 5,467 inpatient admissions and 690,036 outpatient visits during fiscal year 2007.
“This construction project will ensure Nevada’s veterans continue to receive top-notch health care from VA,” says Gordon Mansfield who retired as VA deputy secretary last January. “This area has one of the fastest rates of population growth for veterans in the country.”
KEY PLAYERS
Owner: U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs
General Contractor: Clark Construction Group; Hunt Construction Group
Architect: RTKL Associates Inc.; JMA Architecture Studios
Engineers: Degenkolb; G.C. Wallace; Syska Hennessy Group
Subcontractors: Las Vegas Paving Corp.; Bergelectric; Bomel Construction Co.; Schuff International; Standard Drywall Inc.; Superior Mechanical; Alliance Mechanical Inc.; ISEC Inc.
USEFUL SOURCES
Visit the hospital’s website at www.lasvegas.va.gov
