Base-Isolated Inpatient Facility Opens in Santa Monica

$394 Million Project Overcame New OSHPD Requirements

The need to rebuild St. John's Health Center came after the Northridge earthquake caused $32 million in damages and forced the health center to shut down for nine months. Faced with a choice of structurally upgrading the entire hospital or master planning a new one for the next century, St. John's chose the latter option and hired JCM Group to manage the rebuilding process.

By Greg Aragon

Photo by Greg Aragon

After 10 years of planning, nearly five years of construction and the installment of a new general contractor, the $394 million inpatient facility at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica is ready to enter the future of patient care.

"The North Pavilion at St. John's will change the way we think about hospitals," said Bruce Lamoureux, the health center's CEO. "The technological advances we've incorporated along with the unprecedented attention given to patient comfort in the design of the facility will benefit our patients and the community greatly."

Officially dedicated on Oct. 7, the North Pavilion-part of a phase-one rebuilding process-is a 154-bed ward for critical care, labor and delivery; neonatal intensive care; and general surgery.

Built on 192 base isolators, each with a 48-in. diameter, the North Pavilion will be able to withstand an earthquake with a magnitude of up to 6.8, or twice as big as the Northridge shaker. Each lead-core isolator, which weighs about 3,000 lbs., was manufactured in New Zealand and tested in Japan.

"It's is like a hotel with medical gases," said Terry A. Muldoon, St. John's vice president of engineering services. "Hospitals have always been built very clinically, but with the North Pavilion, St. John's wanted to do something quite different."

He said several project team members from St. John's and Los Angeles-based JCM Group, (the project's construction manager) went on tours of hospitals across the country to study the latest in patient care practices, design and technology, and to interview health care administrators, architects, planners and patients for input on current and future trends.

Designed by the Los Angeles-office of HOK, the four-story, 200,000-sq.-ft. structure not only features the latest in advanced hospital care, but offers comforts usually found in hotels.

Patient rooms include extra-large windows and soft-colored paints; comfortable, oversized sofa beds for family members; sophisticated media systems that include 42-in. plasma TVs and Internet access; and easy-moving medical equipment that makes it possible to transfigure rooms for a variety of medical needs and procedures.

Hallways are carpeted and equipped with indirect lighting down the sides of the ceiling rather than in the center, decreasing overhead glare for patients on gurneys. And each floor features a different color scheme, an electric kiosk to help in navigation and a kitchen with a stove for family members.

Other amenities include global positioning satellite clocks throughout the building that never need setting and a 100-percent, seamless wireless data network system throughout the hospital, which allows physicians, nurses and other staff hands-free calling and instant access to electronic devices.

The need to rebuild St. John's Health Center came in 1994, after the Northridge earthquake caused $32 million in damages and forced the health center to shut down for nine months.

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Muldoon said the hospital was faced with a choice of structurally upgrading the entire hospital or master planning a new one for the next century. It chose the latter and in 1995 hired the JCM Group to manage the rebuilding process.

Construction on the North Pavilion began in April 2000 and was conducted by the Santa Monica office of North Carolina-based J.A. Jones Construction Co., which went out of business in September 2003, just as the building was in the finishing stages. The project was then taken over by Bethesda, Md.-based Clark Construction Group.

"As far as I'm concerned there was no transition time," said James I. Lents, vice president of the JCM Group. "There was a lot of transfer of information, but work never stopped. Clark was on the project the next day."

William Stewart, Clark's project executive, said the transition was not seamless.

"When we got [on site], there were over 300 notices of noncompliance by OSHPD," he said. "At times, I thought it might be easier, to tear it down and start all over."

Stewart said that while the building appeared complete, none of the mechanical and electrical systems had "really wrung out."

"It was a job that you had to come in and go through each system again because you didn't know what state it was in," he added. "It was physically mostly there, but we didn't know if it would run or not."

As an example, he cited the HVAC duct work, which was full of holes, didn't meet pressure requirements and had a lot of fans that didn't meet design criteria. He said it took about $1 million to bring the system up to standard.

Mike Keneipp, senior project manager with Hayward-based University Marelich Mechanical, the project's mechanical, plumbing, piping and sheet metal contractor, said the problems weren't caused by his company's HVAC installation, but arose from new OSHPD requirements and other subcontractors.

He said that his company finished all the HVAC work in 2001 and when Clark arrived on site, everything was roughed in, pressure checked and ready to go.

"They got quality installation," Keneipp said. "But by the time the hospital was nearing completion, three years had elapsed and OSHPD came in with new regulations and a demanded a post-approval document. Clark had to start issuing change orders for fire protection and duct work to meet these requirements. That was the biggest issue."

Keneipp said that the other HVAC problems came from trades people who were eager to finish their portion of the work.

"The building sat for three years with people climbing all over it and crushing duct," Keneipp added. "We had to go back and repair all that, which was a nightmare."

The North Pavilion is the second of three steps making up the hospital's first phase.

The first step was the construction of a 30,000-sq.-ft., below grade central plant, which was completed in 1999. The second step was the demolition of the Behavioral Medicine Building and the construction of the North Pavilion.

The third step will begin next month and consist of the demolition of the hospital's old Main Wing and the construction of the Keck Diagnostic and Treatment Center, a four-story, 275,000-sq.-ft. facility that will be constructed by the Newport Beach office of McCarthy Building Cos. and completed in 2009.

When the $134 million Keck Center is finished, construction will begin on a 540-space underground parking structure and a new entry plaza for the campus.

Phase two, scheduled to begin in 2010, is currently in the planning phase and will include a wellness facility, assisted living facilities, medical office facilities, parking and other medical buildings.