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Prime consultant: Catena Consulting Engineers
Client/owner: Shriners Hospitals for Children
Other consultants: Andersen Construction Co., Genesis Planning, Geotechnical Resources, Halliday Associates, Interface Engineering, Mayer/Reed, MGH Associates, Sparling, SRG Partnership

After 25 years of providing health care for children, the Shriners’ hospital in Portland was in need of a major update. But the location and size of the project site offered little flexibility when it came to adding on to the existing building.

The project team, led by general contractor Andersen Construction and including Catena Consulting Engineers as a prime consultant, looked at several options. Each of the options, including demolishing an existing building and constructing a new parking facility, penciled out as too expensive and too disruptive of daily hospital operations. Then the team came up with a unique plan to clear the 90 feet over an existing parking structure to create room to build a 73,000-square-foot, four-story addition to the existing hospital.

Coming up with the idea for the project design was just part of a workable solution, however. Someone had to figure out how to turn the developed schemes into something that could actually be built without running over budget. And that’s where Catena stepped forward.

“Catena played a large part in that innovative approach,” Thomas F. Ochab, the director of facilities management, maintenance and construction for Shriners Hospitals, wrote in his letter recommending the firm for an ACEC Engineering Excellence award.

Even with a city-required, finely detailed permitting process, Catena found ways to work around site restrictions. The firm came up with flexible approaches to allow the general contractor and project subcontractors to stay on schedule and within budget even when unexpected situations arose, Ochab said.