BJC West County Hospital, located in Creve Couer, is a replacement hospital built adjacent to the existing 47 year-old facility. The project is being built by joint venture PARIC/KAI and was designed by Christner. The new BJC West County Hospital is scheduled for substantial completion in early August.
The six-story, 260,000 sq. ft. project is part of BJC HealthCare’s campus wide renovation on its 54-acre campus. The project also includes a 125,000 sq. ft. medical office building.
The hospital includes 64 private patient rooms and 14 operating rooms. Additionally, more space was added with the capability to expand to 100 patient rooms and 16 operating rooms as demand increases.
The new BJC West County Hospital will feature several Specialty Care units. The speciality units include colorectal, gastroenterology, joint reconstruction and replacement, interventional radiology, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, plastic surgery, spine thoracic, urology, and vascular surgery facilities.
Preliminary sitework began in November 2016 with early-phase parking repositioning on the site. Ground broke for the start of the hospital’s construction in March 2017.
PARIC Sr. Project Manager Daniel Conaway has been on the site since before the project broke ground. “We’re on an existing campus with multiple buildings,” Conaway said, “so site logistics required us to create some additional parking and shuffle components around.”
Because the existing emergency department is located 30 feet above grade, PARIC/KAI and partner Geotechnology Inc., engineered and installed 15,000 cubic yards of load-reducing Elastizell. The Elastizell was installed to reduce settlement and ensure that the entrance was still accessible.
“We made the decision to suspend the underground mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems by tying them to the structural slab itself rather than the traditional trenching and stub up,” Conaway said. “Suspending the systems enables the soil to settle around the systems without pulling them away from the structure.”
Because there were changes in roadway access to the hospital, professionals from Geotechnology performed a second round of borings.
According to PARIC/KAI, floor flatness was one of the main focuses of the project. To ensure flatness, some steel tolerances were adjusted to achieve tighter control and the best quality for concrete installation.
“We used a floor-mapping technique that employed a FARO Focus3D S350 laser scanner and the Rithm Inspector App. This technology gave us the ability to create floor flatness reports and automatically measure slopes and cross slopes to ensure industry standards and specified requirements were being met,” Conaway said.
This article was adapted from “BJC West County Hospital, Florissant Siteman Cancer Center on Track for 2019 Finish” by Kerry Smith of Saint Louis CNR Magazine.