The Cardiac Institute

We've all seen the hospital shows where everyone in the operating room performs their duties in perfect choreographed harmony. Toss several construction contractors into the mix and what do you have?

You have the expansion of the United Regional Health Care System Hospital in Wichita Falls. Haws & Tingle recently completed a five-level vertical expansion and renovation of this 80-year-old hospital. All the while, this six-floor hospital remained in full operation. Land-locked by other businesses, URHCS administration chose this 180,000-square-foot vertical addition to their existing hospital instead of relocating on the outskirts of Wichita Falls.

Working within these tight confines and close proximity to hospital conditions required Haws & Tingle crews to adapt to their situation.

"The construction involved a constant state of cleaning," said Jim Hasenzahl, Haws & Tingle president. "It was as close to clean-room construction as you can get."

Carpeting was covered with mats for protection all through the hospital. Every dust partition was caulked and vacuumed four or five times per day. In certain areas of the hospital, construction workers were required to wear booties and covering over their regular clothes to keep from tracking in dirt.

"What brought it home for me," said Scott Price, president of Haws & Tingle, "we had a bucket of concrete within three feet of a doctor working on his computer. We were pouring concrete into a shear wall." There were areas where concrete had to be brought into the building and up elevators in five-gallon buckets. Minimal staging area and the continual presence of the public prohibited the use of hoses and pumping equipment.

Structure

"The roof of the old building became the slab for the new sixth floor," explained Ed Faulkner, project manager for Haws & Tingle. "However, the new construction was larger than the existing footprint, with a 6-foot overhang all the way around. In order to shore up the new construction, we used wide-flange steel beams on the old roof to cantilever the new slab." Approximately 450 tons of steel was used for the expansion.

To support the added structure, Haws & Tingle poured additional foundations in the basement so that the new columns and shear walls could come up through the existing building.

The shear capacity of the two existing elevator banks and two banks of stairwells was increased by forming their walls outward. Reinforcing steel tied into the existing shear walls fused old and new into a single structure. The existing 24 columns were reinforced with FRP (fiber reinforced polymer) wrap.

The very nature of hospital equipment requires specific construction methods. Vast amounts of conduit were required for the new x-ray, MRI and CT digital imaging. Standard specifications to the post-tensioned slabs were increased to bear the load of four GE diagnostic machines, each weighing 3.5 tons and requiring super-flat floors, according to Faulkner.

The order of finish-out was also affected by this being an operational hospital. The new levels were completed from the top down. All the hospital's mechanical equipment, generators and air-conditioning units that originally sat on the roof — now the sixth floor — are situated in a 10th floor penthouse mechanical room.

"During construction, it all had to remain operational because it serviced the whole lower area," explained Price. "Not until we turned on the new equipment in the penthouse could we come and take the old equipment out."

Also, since the administration wanted the new ninth floor cardiac center operational first, finish-out continued downward. Construction began on the renovation in July of 2002. Dedication of the new facility was held on July 15, 2004.