Family Album

Building Big at Hoag Hospital
By: Jim Mynott

The team exhibited the best qualifications, experience… they were very candid about the challenges we face on this project.” These were some of the comments we received after being awarded the Women's Pavilion at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach. This 320,000 square-foot acute care facility will become the home to women's healthcare in the Orange County area. When completed in 2005, the Women's Pavilion will house inpatient and outpatient facilities for women's services as well as general surgical facilities for men and women. It will become a fixture in the New-port Beach landscape and truly cement McCarthy as the nation's #1 healthcare builder and the builder of choice in the Southern California healthcare market.

The award of this project follows a string of 8 completed McCarthy projects on the Hoag campus, the most recent of which was the completion of a new 455-car parking structure built to service the Women's Pavilion. The Women's Pavilion represents the single largest project undertaken by Hoag Hospital in 28 years and represents the largest project, based on contract value, undertaken in Orange County by the Southern California Division to date.

But what makes the project even more challenging is the execution of the project within the confines of the campus and next to the existing hospital. The project team has little working room, restricted access and offsite logistics that will require every imaginable solution to maintain the existing campus. You could draw the analogy to a difficult surgery as the project team and preconstruction teams are working to define the initial GMP and award early contracts in preparation for an August 2002 start. The patient is being prepped for what will be a true test of our skills as a builder.

Another unique aspect to the project is that this facility is being built using base isolation. Located in a Level 4 seismic zone, the structural steel moment-frame rests on 54 base isolators. These isolators allow the structure to move up to 30 inches laterally in a seismic event without causing damage to the building. Sitting on the base isolators are built-up box columns that are approximately 52 feet tall and weigh over 60,000 pounds each. The structural steel system incorporates the latest code considerations for moment frame welding including an extensive pre-heat requirement and weld certification that are new interpretations to the code. “Controlling building movement during the fit-up and welding process is one of my largest concerns” said Lee Davis, the Project Superintendent.

In any event, Hoag Women's Pavilion is the feather in the cap for the Southern California Division. We are proud to be chosen for this project and will let you know how we are progressing in future issues of McCurrents.