In Medford this week, crews broke ground on one of the largest health care projects in Oregon. Portland-based Andersen Construction began excavation and foundation work for a six-story, 323,600-square-foot expansion of Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center.

The new, $420 million patient pavilion will provide critical care, cardiac care and advanced surgical space, as well as two stories of women’s and children’s health care space – including a state-of-the-art neonatal intensive care unit. After the addition is completed (spring 2023 is the target date), 79,000 square feet of the existing hospital will receive renovations.

“Most of the capital improvement and master facility plan is focused on increasing our capacity for our highest level acute patients,” said Mick Zdeblick, CEO of Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center – one of three critical care facilities in the Rogue Valley operated by Asante.

International firm HDR designed the patient pavilion. Jacobs Engineering is serving as a project management consultant.

“It’s a broader team approach,” Zdeblick said.

Andersen Construction will work with Ashland-based Adroit Construction, which will tackle the renovations in the existing building.

“Andersen has been great to work with because we wanted to encourage our local subcontractors and contractors to be employed on this project,” Zdeblick said. “And Adroit is a local company that knows our campus really well.”

The patient pavilion building will be fairly standard when it comes to construction typology, said Jerrod Kowalewski, a project executive with Andersen Construction.

“It’s pretty cut and dried,” he said. “They set it up well for an addition when they built the last tower expansion. I’d say, really, it’s like any hospital work. It’s the tie-ins and the making sure we’re not disrupting the daily operations.”

There are several logistical challenges, however, including an expedited design process, Kowalewski said. Plus, finding enough qualified subcontractors to work on a project of this size in Southern Oregon has proved difficult.

“We got brought on right when they were on concept last fall,” he said. “HDR is designing a (large) expansion in 12 months. We’re all working remotely with the user groups, so it will pose a challenge because they’re designing at the same time they’re designing the renovation phase for after this.”

Andersen Construction also is benefiting from its good relationship with Pacific Electric Group, according to Kowalewski. The union-affiliated subcontractor from Medford is teaming up with Oregon Electric Group on one of the project’s critical components – a series of prefabricated ceiling systems that will equip 20 new operating rooms.

“OEG has a lot of (preconstruction) prowess and prefab experience,” he said. “And the idea is to have common racks for MEPS and trying to get everyone dialed in and building in their shops up here. We’re trying to minimize on-site labor as much as possible by doing as much prefabrication as we can.”

The ceiling systems come with LED lighting, all required ductwork and all the boom supports for the operating booms.

Normally, the systems required in operating rooms create a substantial amount of congestion in the ceilings, said Ben Gengler, a senior project manager with Andersen Construction. This approach, known as a single large diffuser, integrates framing of the booms into the body of the diffuser, allowing installation in one piece.

“It minimizes overhead structure,” Gengler said. “And with 20 new ORs, taking that approach is saving us weeks of work. It’s not necessarily a cheaper approach from a construction standpoint, but from time savings and efficiency, it’s a very big savings for us.”

Wilsonville-based subcontractor Western Partitions Inc., renowned for its prefabricated wall systems, is scheduled to work on the project, Kowalewski added.

“We’re also looking a lot at the façade elements and seeing what we can do there” with prefabrication, he said.

The building’s shell will feature structural steel atop a concrete foundation and one level of below-grade parking.

“The steel structure and concrete are going to be very conventional,” Gengler said. “We’re using side plate in lieu of brace frame construction. It’s a more expensive assembly, and it upsizes a lot of the columns, but we realize the time savings on the installation side.”

The entire project was aided by extensive use of 3-D building information modeling (BIM) and augmented reality software, Zdeblick added. These tools allowed project team members and hospital staffers to virtually inspect the new pavilion as it was designed, give feedback, and further tinker with the pieces.

“HDR created floor layouts and design elements in 3-D and gave that to our clinicians,” he said. “They were literally walking through the BIM or 3-D program and critiquing it that way.”

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The city of Portland has received proposals from three contractors interested in building the Bull Run Filtration Plant, a water treatment facility – estimated to cost between $550 million and $650 million to construct.

A request for proposals for a construction manager/general contractor for the project drew submissions from Hoffman Construction, MWH-Kiewit Joint Venture of Hillsboro and Arizona-based Sundt Construction.

The facility will be constructed on a 90-acre area of unincorporated Multnomah County near the Gresham border. Granular media filtration will be used to daily treat between 145 million and 160 million gallons of water from the Bull Run watershed.

The project will include construction of an administration building, a clear well measuring up to 16 million gallons in volume, a mechanical dewatering facility and other support buildings. Earthwork could require exporting more than a million cubic yards of dirt.

Stantec Consulting Services Inc. is designing the filtration facility, and the city has hired Brown and Caldwell to provide program management and support services. The plant is the major component of the Bull Run Filtration Projects – an estimated $820 million effort that will also include construction of pipelines carrying raw and finished water into and out of the facility. The pipeline work will be designed and constructed under separate contracts.

The city earlier this year issued an RFP for design services on the pipeline portion of the project, and on April 20 issued an intent to negotiate and award to Jacobs Engineering Group.

The project is being carried out by the Portland Water Bureau at the direction of the Oregon Health Authority as a result of the presence of cryptosporidium in the Bull Run watershed. After multiple tests in 2017 revealed the presence of the pathogen, the OHA revoked the city’s variance from federal rules requiring treatment of cryptosporidium.

A compliance agreement between Portland and the OHA requires pilot plant results and preliminary planning to be completed by Nov. 30, 2020, submission of final construction plans and schedule by Oct. 31, 2022, and water delivery meeting OHA and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requirements by Sep. 30, 2027.

The RFP sought proposers with experience delivering large water or wastewater projects using the CM/GC method. The city of Portland’s Procurement Services division is currently in the process of evaluating proposals, and will likely conduct interviews during the selection process before issuing an intent to award, which is expected to occur next month.

Portland City Council last month agreed to enter a loan agreement with the EPA to provide up to $745 million of funding for the Bull Run Filtration Projects. The city’s Debt Management Division and the Water Bureau will seek to finalize terms and execute loan agreements this summer. The filtration facility has entered a two-year design phase, while planning for the pipelines is under way and will move to a design phase next year.

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