OFFSITE CONSTRUCTION
constant improvement of internal logistics, such as flow of materials and waste, and processes for improving lead times.
A healthcare example of a temporary offsite facility One of the first examples of ‘offsite’ construction in hospitals in the US was led by the architecture firm, NBBJ. The main driver for prefabrication in this case was not simply to prove that a building could be manufactured, but rather the aesthetic and functional aspects of the project that required a high level of personalisation for a particular healthcare client. This first project in which prefabrication was implemented by NBBJ was undertaken at the Cardiac Center of the Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, Ohio, a 12-floor, 480,000 ft2
building with a construction
cost of US$ 137 million (Andía and Spiegelhalter, 2015).6
Once the hospital design was
completed, NBBJ and contractor, Skanska, determined which elements could be modularised, and five prefabrication
MEP frames
All the MEP frames that go over the circulation corridors were manufactured in
initiatives were defined: unified external curtain walling; a temporary pedestrian walkway; the manufacture of nurses’ workstations; the creation of patient rooms through the prefabrication of walls and bathrooms (Fig. 1), and an integrated rack system which houses all mechanical, electrical and plumbing infrastructure above the corridors.
Initiatives 3, 4, and 5 listed above were the most innovative. For these, Skanska leased a warehouse approximately 5 km from the construction site, and prefabricated the components offsite. All the modular bathrooms and the walls that made up the patients’ rooms were built in the warehouse. The installation of the modular bathrooms and the walls was able to be undertaken rapidly (Fig. 2). It took an 8-hour day to install 33 bathroom modules, and just one and a half weeks to install 30,000 ft2
of inpatient floor.
the same warehouse facility. All HVAC ducts, control boxes, gas, plumbing, sprinkler lines, electrical conduits, and cable trays, were placed inside 210 MEP prefabricated racks. The 8 x 22 ft MEP racks fit over the 16 ft wide corridors of the hospital wings. It took a day to transport and deliver a full floor of racks, and between and one and one and half weeks to secure the racks in their final position.
NBBJ Architects says the work undertaken in the prefabricated warehouse was ‘more productive’, with just 18 staff prefabricating the 180 patient rooms and the 210 MEP racks over a three-month timescale. The architect and the builder observed that there was a great improvement in the quality of construction, a reduction in construction errors, and improvements in both productivity and job security. They also noted a faster schedule and a significant reduction in construction waste. A good example of the productivity gains achieved was in the installation of
Figure 6: Views of the BLOX manufacturing plant.
August 2019 Health Estate Journal 25
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