McCarthy Building Companies, Inc., one of the nation’s leading education facility builders, has been awarded the contract for the construction management of the new 150,000-square-foot, four-story Health Sciences Biomedical Research Facility at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), in La Jolla, Calif.
The new research laboratory has a function similar to the existing 145,000-square-foot UCSD School of Medicine Leichtag Family Foundation for Biomedical Research Building, which McCarthy completed for the University in spring of 2004. The newer facility will be part of the ongoing expansion of the School of Medicine campus.
Boone Hellman, campus architect for UCSD, is overseeing the $90 million project, with James Gillie, senior director of construction services for UCSD, supervising construction. Anticipating a two-year build-out, McCarthy will begin construction in fall of 2010.
Designed by nationally known ZGFArchitects, LLP (ZGF), the research building will fit within the modern design context of the academic mall on the School of Medicine campus. The facility will encompass wet labs, open lab space, meeting rooms and support space on four stories above ground, with core lab space and support mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems located in the basement. The exterior of the building will be a combination of architectural concrete, curtain wall, metal panels, and terra cotta cladding.
A primary goal for the new facility is to achieve LEED Gold or possibly Platinum level of certification from the United States Green Building Council. This will necessitate an intensive, thoughtful approach to all aspects of design and construction and especially the build-out of the overall mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems to ensure optimum energy efficiency.
“The University and our design team have an expectation of this being one of the most sustainably designed and highest performing research labs on the UCSD campus and possibly in the country,” said Joe Collins, AIA, a partner with ZGF and principal architect for the new UCSD education laboratory. “We’ve had a lot of success teaming with McCarthy on past UC-system projects. For this new facility, we’re going a step beyond to create, along with the owner, a customized project delivery system that brings the major trades into the project earlier to ensure its success.”
According to Bob Betz, project director for McCarthy, the aspect of the project that will prove most challenging is construction of the lab space and the highly MEP-intensive areas of the overhead construction. Building Information Modeling (BIM) will be utilized extensively to help in the coordination of these spaces.
One of the more important features of the building design is the exterior architectural concrete work, which McCarthy will self perform. The firm previously achieved noteworthy success on the poured-in-place concrete of the nearby award-winning Student Academic Services Facility, completed by McCarthy in August 2007.
KPFF of Portland and San Diego is the structural engineer for the new UCSD Health Sciences Biomedical Research Facility. IBE Consulting Engineers, based in Sherman Oaks, is the mechanical and plumbing engineer, and Integrated Engineering Consultants of Los Angeles is the electrical engineer. Spurlock Poirier of San Diego is the landscape architect. RFD, also of San Diego, is the laboratory-planning consultant.
About McCarthy
McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. is the nation’s 10th largest domestic general contractor (Engineering News-Record, May 2008) and among the top 10 education builders (Engineering News-Record, October 2006). The firm has been building in the education market for the last 50 years. Committed to the construction of high performance buildings, the company has managed construction or built more than 300 K-12 school projects nationwide, totaling more than $2 billion in construction value, and nearly 100 higher education projects on more than 50 campuses. In addition to San Diego, McCarthy has offices in Newport Beach, Sacramento and San Francisco, Calif.; Phoenix; Las Vegas; St. Louis; Dallas and Atlanta. McCarthy is 100 percent employee owned. More information about the company is available online at www.mccarthy.com
