91视频

A long-delayed project to seismically upgrade the Veterans Affairs Portland Health Care System is now rolling into gear after Congress hit the reset button, and one project leader now says a billion-dollar price tag is realistic.

Loads of questions are now being sorted out, including how the VA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) will work together on the project, and whether to relocate off seismically-vulnerable Marquam Hill.

VA officials are preparing to award a $5.5 million 鈥減roject book鈥� contract to research and identify project requirements. But it’s known that heavy seismic upgrades will be needed on buildings 100 and 101, which see heavy patient use, and are considered two of the most seismically-vulnerable buildings of the nearly 6,000 in the VA’s inventory.

The project is now expected to cost $875 million. VA senior project manager James W. Harvey cautioned that the figure could change depending on results of the project book studies. It could drop as low as $650 million, where it was originally eyed, or rise quite higher.

鈥淜eep in mind that Denver was an $800 million project until USACE took over in 2015, and it’s now being completed at $1.8 billion,鈥� he said.

USACE is involved due to recent laws passed requiring the VA to retain another federal agency for 鈥渕ega projects鈥� valued above $100 million. A transition plan and inter-agency funding agreement have been signed by the Portland District and USACE. Both are requirements of the 2015 and 2016 congressional actions passed after costs and schedule of a Denver VA renovation project more than doubled.

Eric Strickland, Portland-based project manager for USACE, said the agency collects money on a reimbursement basis, and charges only for exactly which materials and services it uses.

鈥淲e do not make a profit; that’s private industry,鈥� he said.

Six companies submitted bids to win the project book contract. The VA did not provide their names.

鈥淧roject book鈥� is an old U.S. Navy term referring to all pre-design work necessary for a project, from geotechnical surveys to traffic studies. In this case, there will be about 20 separate reports in all.

The project book approach is being employed here because the VA is now prevented from performing design, procurement and construction management work on its mega projects. But it’s not prevented from 鈥渋nformation gathering,鈥� Harvey said.

鈥淪o the hospital will put together its requirements and hand them to the Corps,鈥� he said.

The book will be due in mid-May 2018. USACE will work in the meantime to find an architect of record.

The current estimated time of preconstruction is about four years. Construction work could take five to six.

And much work is needed on the Marquam Hill facility, according to leaders with USACE and the VA. The proposed renovations are aimed at mitigating deterioration and failure of the tile facade of buildings 100 (680,392 square feet) and 101(129,692 square feet), and bringing the buildings up to current seismic code, according to a VA memo obtained through a records request by the 91视频.

The project includes much more than just the seismic upgrades:

• demolition of three temporary buildings, including the 25,349-square-foot Butler Building;
• upgrades to Building 102 (the central existing parking structure);
• construction of two sky-bridges;
• construction of a 335,000-square-foot specialty clinic;
• above-ground parking structure for 600 cars; and
• upgrades to utility infrastructure and the Central Plant.

The upgrade work will be phased so hospital operations can continue.

The project is the first to be performed jointly by USACE and the VA from the start (on several others, USACE was added partway through). The project will be the largest ever to use the project book approach and only the third in recent history, according to Harvey.

And that’s not all.

鈥淲hen this gets going, this hospital project is going to be the largest hospital project in the United States,鈥� he said.

The need to upgrade the Portland VA hospital has been understood for years. Early planning was occurring as far back as 2012, but major cost and scheduling overruns on the Denver VA project complicated the effort. Local VA officials were only days away from signing with a builder, when Congress told them to halt.

Four laws passed in 2015 and 2016 in response to the Denver debacle took project management, design and procurement authority from the VA and gave it to USACE.

Though the project was first envisioned to cost $650 million in 2012, Harvey said it was not properly scoped. The latest estimates account for several new issues. For one, the Blue Star Memorial Highway Parking Garage between the two main buildings has structural problems that need to be addressed. There was also a legal problem with landing the VA’s LifeFlight helicopters at OHSU, which required the need for a helipad closer to the VA campus. With the helicopters delivering trauma patients closer, VA leaders thought a trauma room should be placed near the helipad.

A last-minute proposal even called for studying whether to relocate the campus off seismically-vulnerable Marquam Hill. A similar VA facility was recently completed in Las Vegas for $540 million with 1 million square feet of medical space. Harvey said a similar project could work in Portland if space was available.

鈥淲e can stabilize the building, but we can’t stabilize the hill,鈥� Harvey said. 鈥淢aybe the VA being located at the top of a hill is something we should think about.鈥�

Harvey said cooperation between the VA and USACE has so far been strained, with the latter attempting to assume greater control of the preliminary work.

To that, USACE’s Strickland said, 鈥淚f Jim feels that way, we should talk.鈥�

鈥淲e feel the communication has been going well,鈥� Strickland said. 鈥淭he rub is in the fact that this is the first project between the Corps and the VA to start at the very beginning, and so there’s some growing pains associated.鈥�