Including a 17-story adult tower and a 10-story children’s tower, the project provides 480 new hospital beds to serve the large Inland Empire community in Southern California. The structure of the building consists of a unique steel frame, including foundation insulation, fluid-viscous dampers, moment and support frames. The structure was designed to use 25,000 tons of steel to withstand earthquakes in the nearby San Jacinto Fault.
Inside the building, there is an impressive list of specialized equipment to support Level 2 emergency services and imaging, as well as Level 3 medical care. The fourth floor houses all the mechanical HVAC equipment for the entire building. The fifth floor is the delivery room of the medical center, and the wards of the adult and children’s buildings extend up to the sixth floor.
The project connects the new facility to the existing hospital campus, power plant and new main entrance with two bridges accentuated by a 30-foot trellis canopy.
Due to the project’s proximity to the San Jacinto Fault, analysis of the building’s structure with a running simulation engine showed that, in addition to horizontal movement, the building would be affected by vertical movement. This discovery prompted further structural design and analysis, which strongly influenced the structural design of the building. At the time of this change, MEP coordination was ongoing and was eventually put on hold pending review and consideration of a new structural design.
As a result of the design changes, there were significant delays in the project and the need for secondary coordination of the MEP system due to the increase in beam size affecting overhead coordination. Throughout the process, the team overcame delays and re-coordinated the building to incorporate the new steel structure into the BIM model.
The design team also worked with OSHPD to get approval for an early design package so fabrication of the steel base and matte foundation reinforcement could begin. The entire team visits the production floor every two months to review problems and ensure they are quickly resolved.
Due to the delay, the project’s baseline schedule was reset and the owner asked the contractor to help reduce the delay and speed up the project by six months. This is achieved through a statutory overtime allowance that is used to support activities on the critical path during the week and Sunday. Once the building structure was completed, the internal expansion was completed within 36 months.
The project was built next to the existing children’s hospital, children are watching the construction through the windows of patients. To keep the kids entertained, the project team and Loma Linda University created videos for kids using 360-degree cameras to immerse them in the workplace.
Greg Aragon is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles who writes about the architecture of the Golden State.
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