While a half-billion dollars’ worth of state-of-the-art construction work for Oregon Health and Science University buzzes in Portland’s South Waterfront District, another highly technical project on OHSU‘s Marquam Hill campus involves building a building in reverse.

Turner Construction‘s $10 million demolition of the 140,000-square-foot former OHSU School of Dentistry is complicated by tons and tons of hazardous materials, geotechnical considerations with campus-wide implications, and a highly sensitive workplace environment.

“Much bigger buildings have been demo’d before,” said Brian Newman, vice president of campus development at OHSU. “But because of its setting and a mandate to keep the campus operating and put patient and visitor safety first, it’s a highly complex demolition.”

OHSU is in the process of demolishing the former educational building on Southwest Campus Drive. The dentistry school relocated to the Collaborative Life Sciences Building in 2014 as part of a larger goal of moving some OHSU education programs to the growing Schnitzer campus in the South Waterfront District.

Tearing down the former dentistry school building has two purposes. One is to expand the Casey Eye Institute into a new five-story building that will take up about one-third of the property formerly occupied by the dentistry school. The other purpose is to prep the remaining two-thirds of the property for hospital expansion.

Several factors complicate the effort. For one, the dentistry school building was built at the height of asbestos use in construction, and all of that material must be slowly and carefully abated. After approximately six months of work, that effort is nearly completed. The next six months will involve shoring and structural work, including adding steel tiebacks to the hillside. The reason is that the existing building is deeply embedded in the hill and, on the opposite side, helping hold up Campus Drive.

“So before we just tear out the building, we have to do lots of work to support the hillside and to support Campus Drive,” Newman said.

The shoring work is expected to wrap in late September, which is when visitors to the campus would be able to start seeing the building come down. But don’t expect a swinging wrecking ball – the actual demolition is contracted to be done in a slow, controlled process, Newman said.

By August 2018, the site will be cleared and ready for the $45 million Casey Eye Institute expansion. That project will add 50,000 to 60,000 square feet to serve in particular the Elks Children’s Eye Clinic at the eye institute. The project also involves adding space for the institute’s genetics and retina programs, as well as some imaging space.

It’s OHSU’s first project designed by Seattle-based architecture firm NBBJ. Skanska is the general contractor.

All the work led to another change at OHSU. Like many large institutional owners, OHSU has used project management firms to serve as owner’s representatives and shepherd projects. But to oversee the current capital campaign, OHSU has staffed up with around a half-dozen project managers for the South Waterfront work alone. Keeping project management talent in-house will help OHSU retain expertise and institutional memory, Newman said.

“So, as long as we have a major project every couple years, we can do this,” he said. “We don’t know that it will always be the case – there could always be a recession. But that’s a risk anyways, right?”

The newly formed “Major Projects Team,” led by Bill Bowen, joins approximately 45 employees in OHSU’s Campus Development division.

Ongoing OHSU projects

Knight Cancer Research Building: $190 million

Center for Health and Healing South phase II:  $360 million

Casey Eye Institute expansion: $45 million

School of Dentistry demolition: $10 million

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The University of Oregon‘s John Yeon Center this spring will host a lecture series on landscape architecture and urban design.

The four lectures in the series, “A New City Beautiful: Landscape + Infrastructure = Public Space,” will take place in April and May at different sites in Portland.

Randy Gragg, Yeon Center executive director, will help lead the conversations with prominent designers. Speakers include Belgian landscape architect Bas Smets; David Rubin, principal of Philadelphia-based landscape architecture firm LAND COLLECTIVE; Tilikum Crossing architect Donald MacDonald; and Michael Singer, a landscape architect and artist.

Smets will give a free lecture, “Landscape is Fiction,” on April 16 starting at 6 p.m. at Jimmy Mak’s, 221 N.W. 10th Ave. The leader of Brussels-based firm Bureau Bas Smets will discuss his design philosophy and inspirations.

Rubin’s lecture, “The City is a Landscape,” is set for April 18 at 3 p.m. at Portland State University’s Shattuck Hall. His talk will be the first Douglas Macy Lecture on Landscape Architecture, presented together with the Yeon Center by the American Society of Landscape Architects‘ Oregon chapter. The admission cost is $10 or $5 for students at the door.

The third lecture, “The Spirit of Details,” will take place May 7 at 6:30 p.m. at the Collaborative Life Sciences Building, 2730 S.W. Moody Ave. The free talk will feature three members of the team that designed the Tilikum Crossing. MacDonald will be joined by engineers Semyon Treyger and David Goodyear to discuss the bridge’s cable-stayed design.

The series will conclude on May 18 with Singer’s free lecture, “Reimagining Beauty: Creating Living Public Space,” at 6:30 p.m. in the Miller Ballroom at the Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave.

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Oregon Health & Science University officials plan by early next year to hire architects and contractors for two new buildings in the South Waterfront District.

The university anticipates having firms contracted to design and build the $340 million Center for Health and Healing South in mid-December and having a project team in place for the $160 million Knight Cancer Research Building by early January 2015, OHSU spokeswoman Tamara Hargens-Bradley said. She declined to name the finalists among firms responding to requests for proposals that OHSU issued in August.

The estimated 675,000-square-foot Center for Health and Healing South will hold ambulatory surgery services and outpatient clinics for cancer treatment and cardiovascular surgery. It also will house the clinical trials for OHSU’s Knight Cancer Institute, an 80-bed guesthouse, a conference center, a central utility plant and a parking garage.

The approximately 330,000-square-foot Knight Cancer Center Building will have research labs, administrative offices, a conference center and parking. Plans to construct the center got a boost last year when Nike co-founder Phil Knight promised to give $500 million to the Knight Cancer Institute if OHSU could raise $500 million more in two years.

Construction is scheduled to start on both buildings in March 2016 and finish by July 2018.

The buildings will be constructed near the $295 million Collaborative Life Sciences Building, which opened in June.

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The Collaborative Life Sciences Building, now open in Portland’s South Waterfront District, has received a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum rating from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The $295 million project, a joint venture of Oregon Health & Science University, Portland State University and Oregon State University, earned the designation through various sustainable features. Some are green roofs, toilets that flush with rainwater and energy efficient lighting and ventilation. Another factor considered was the building’s proximity to public transportation, including the Portland Streetcar and TriMet’s MAX orange light-rail line slated to open in September 2015.

A celebration was held in June for the opening of the approximately 650,000-square-foot, two-building complex with classrooms, lecture halls, laboratories, research centers and patient clinics that will be used by the three universities. The 12-story tower portion of the complex will house OHSU‘s School of Dentistry.

Portland-based SERA Architects and Los Angeles-based CO Architects designed the project to foster collaboration between students, researchers and faculty members who will use the building. JE Dunn Construction was the general contractor.

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An opening celebration for the OHSU/OUS Collaborative Life Sciences Building was held Thursday morning for the new $295 million building in the South Waterfront. A LEED Platinum rating is being sought for the two-building complex, which contains classrooms, lecture halls, laboratories, research centers and patient clinics to be used by Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland State University, and Oregon State University. The complex’s 12-story tower will house OHSU’s School of Dentistry. Project team members include general contractor JE Dunn, SERA Architects and Los Angeles-based CO Architects, and construction manager DAY CPM.

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will break ground Thursday on a 500,000-square-foot project that is moving from design to construction.

The Collaborative Life Sciences Building will be owned and occupied by Oregon Health & Science University, Portland State University and the Oregon University System. The $295 million, two-part project is funded by the institutions, by bonds, philanthropic donations and a contribution from TriMet, which will operate a transit station adjacent to the building.

The building’s program will include labs and classrooms, research centers, the OHSU School of Dentistry and doctor’s offices, and it is being designed by a team of and California-based . The design firms, as well as consultants and members of the construction team, are co-locating at SERA’s offices to work on the design of the building, which is in the schematic drawing phase. An initial design for the building is currently passing through Portland’s design review process.

The building will be the first built on OHSU’s new Schnitzer campus near South Waterfront.

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When SERA Architects bid to design the Collaborative Life Sciences Building for the Oregon University System, the firm knew the project timeline was short. Design started in May, and the building needs to be ready for Portland State University staff by July 2013.

Donald Eggleston, SERA president and principal, believed there was only one way to get the work done on time.

“Because the Collaborative Life Sciences Building had a very short schedule, we put forth that the only way to do it was to be colocated,” Eggleston said.

In the colocation approach, other firms’ project representatives join SERA in its offices three days each week. Parties include: Day CPM, the owner’s representative; CO Architects, a partner project architecture firm; J.E. Dunn, contractor; and engineering firms KPFF and Interface Engineering. Some first-tier subcontractors also are participating.

“If you followed a normal Oregon University System process, you’d have two years to do design and bid the project,” Eggleston said. In this case, the team has two years to design and construct the entire building. Construction is slated to begin in October.

Colocation is rising in popularity, said Scott Kelsey, principal-in-charge for CO Architects. His firm, based in Los Angeles, works on higher education projects around the country, and often relocates teams.

The process can benefit such teams significantly, Kelsey said. For example, instead of receiving cost estimates from a contractor or an independent cost consultant at the end of each design phase, architects meet with contractors and consultants every one to two weeks to give “real-time feedback.”

Colocation offers a valuable opportunity to constantly discuss a project’s feasibility, constructability and cost, SERA project leader Alene Davis added.

It also can reduce lag time in communication.

“If I have a question for someone, I will literally get up and ask them a question,” Eggleston said. “I don’t have to send an email or send a phone call and wonder when I’m going to hear back.”

The downside, he added, is an increased number of meetings. The Collaborative Life Sciences Building project has spread throughout SERA’s office and takes up much of the conference space.

Project members say the benefits of colocation would be less for a project with a more traditional, linear timeline.

“If your project has a long, long schedule, there’s really no advantage,” Eggleston said. “Complexity is also an issue – on a simple apartment house with only a couple of consultants, there’s no advantage.”

For the Collaborative Life Sciences Building, however, SERA and CO architects are working with 12 consulting firms.

Many of the firms involved, and many members of those teams, want to participate. Unfortunately, not all of them can fit.

“The one thing that’s surprised me is how many people want to be in the colocate space,” Davis said. “We don’t have enough physical space.”

SERA’s first experience with colocation was in 2010, when it designed a major renovation of the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt federal building. The process was introduced by the project owner, the General Services Administration.

Colocation shaved off between 15 and 27 months for the design phase, GSA supervisory project executive Pat Brunner said. That was essential, because that building renovation was paid for with federal stimulus money, which had an expiration date.

Technical issues for colocation projects such as the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt and Collaborative Life Sciences buildings can create major headaches because representatives of multiple firms need to have computers that network with one another and can still communicate with home offices.

For the federal project, Brunner said the GSA spent more than $370,000 on technology so that the entire colocation team could work on the same Building Information Modeling system. He added that the move actually saved money for the fast-tracked project.

Another major challenge of the colocation approach focuses on culture. During the federal project, the GSA surveyed project team members to see how they were reacting to the unusual environment. While most people recognized benefits to colocation, some consistently gave negative feedback.

“Younger people are comfortable with collaboration and group work,” Brunner said. “The younger staff weren’t as wedded to a physical location and were much more adaptable.”

The GSA hasn’t used colocation frequently, but Brunner said he expects it to be used more in the future.

Colocation is, in a way, the next step of integrated project delivery.

“I think with the way the industry as a whole is moving towards fast-tracked schedules and more design-build or CM-GC-type processes, the colocate model is of tremendous benefit,” Davis said.

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