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Coney Island Surprise
Hospital Project Keeps Skanska
On Its Toes
By Amy S. Choi
| Among
challenges with a hospital project is to ensure construction
does not interfere with existing operations. |
The element of surprise is tricky in developments, particularly
hospitals.
"It's an ongoing coordination, and because it's a functioning
hospital you have to be respectful of all activity and aware
of what the hospital is doing at all times," said Peter
Chorman, senior vice president of Parsippany, N.J.-based Skanska
USA Building Inc.
Skanska serves as construction manager for the $66 million
Coney Island Hospital modernization project for the Dormitory
Authority of the State of New York, which represents the Health
and Hospitals Corp.
The first phase of the modernization, which broke ground
in November 2002, was a gut and rebuild of cardiac lab facilities
and consolidation of the hospital's ambulatory care. Skanska
recently broke ground on its second phase, a new 120,000-sq.-ft.,
seven-story addition. The new development will include 212
medical and surgical beds, a pediatric ambulatory care facility
and a nursery.
The project is scheduled for completion in early 2005.
During the construction, Skanska must be aware of the hospital's
needs and how to respond to emergencies. New York City's power
outage during the summer, for example, hit as workers were
pouring a concrete floor. The floor needed to be stopped immediately
to provide additional ambulance access to the hospital for
an anticipated increase in demand.
"We have to be flexible enough to organize and work
around the hospital, and their needs can change in a flash,"
Chorman said.
Anthony Mele, project manager for Skanksa, said the most
important thing is to keep the hospital functioning at all
times. "You have to be very delicate with what you do
while working with the existing hospital," he added.
Workers also had to incorporate the new facilities into the
older campus. Beyond dealing with old former infrastructure
and utility lines that were not recorded on the original documents
and having to reroute the construction, project engineers
had to handle new requirements for health-care facilities.
Depth requirements, for example, have changed, so the new
addition was built with higher floor-to-floor heights, and
bridges and ramps had to be built to connect the new to the
old facility.
"You have to be creative with the different possibilities
to come up with the solutions to get it done," Chorman
said. "Once we were dealing with all the known quantities,
life got a lot easier."
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