After years’ worth of delays, a massive federal project to upgrade the seismically vulnerable Portland VA Medical Center on Marquam Hill is moving forward.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers‘ Portland District in August selected a joint venture of ZGF Architects and Leo A. Daly, an Omaha, Nebraska-based design, engineering and planning firm, to provide architectural and engineering services for improvements to the Veterans Affairs‘ facility. The design contract, carrying a maximum value of $130 million, has a base period of five years with an optional five-year extension.

The scope of work is to include the seismic upgrades of three structures considered at extremely high risk of failure in a seismic event: Building 100, the 638,843-square-foot main hospital building with nine stories above grade and two below; Building 101, a 130,852-square-foot research and administrative building; and Building 102, a below-grade parking garage that supports the roadway in front of buildings 100 and 101.

A sky-bridge connecting two buildings will also undergo structural reinforcement, and a second sky-bridge will be constructed to connect with a new Specialty Care Building that will provide swing space during the renovations of buildings 100 and 101. A new parking garage is also planned, as are demolitions of several smaller buildings and either a new or upgraded energy plant.

In addition to seismic upgrades, nearly 750,000 square feet of space in buildings 100 and 101 will be renovated, and failing facades will be repaired or replaced. The main hospital building, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and ZGF, was completed in 1987.

The planned upgrades date back to at least 2012, when the VA issued notice for firms interested in performing design work on the massive project. By 2015, the VA said the then-unfunded project was in “full swing,” but no architect was under contract. In 2017, the project wasn’t advancing because of a lack of funding, and a VA project manager estimated that the original $650 million cost estimate could potentially reach $1 billion.

Two years later, as commercial construction costs continue to rise, USACE officials are declining to provide an estimated project cost. That figure, according to Lauren Bennett, a public affairs specialist with the USACE Portland District, will be available within the next few months, pending review of a $6.5 million “project book” pre-design study conducted by Schwab Engineering of Glendale, California.

The study was commissioned by the VA last year and delivered late last month. It was reviewed by the USACE Portland District before being sent to the VA’s Office of Construction & Facilities Management for review and approval.

A solicitation for a contract for technical services issued this past May lists an estimated construction cost of $650 million.

For now, an initial $3.5 million task order to the ZGF/Leo A. Daly Joint Venture is funding preliminary work through April 2020, including creation of design concepts and a charette in which the project team will review and select a plan to be reviewed by the VA.

The technical services contract, which would include quality assurance review of design documentation, construction bid documents, value engineering/management services and technical review and scoping of other contractors’ services, is due to be awarded in the first quarter of next year. That contract carries a maximum value of $25 million.

According to a November 2018 solicitation for architecture and engineering services, the design is anticipated to be 35 percent complete by next spring, and fully complete by early 2021. A congressional budget request will be made in mid-2020, with construction to begin in 2022 and conclude in 2029.

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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 “project book” 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.

“Keep 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,” he said.

USACE is involved due to recent laws passed requiring the VA to retain another federal agency for “mega projects” 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.

“We do not make a profit; that’s private industry,” he said.

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

“Project book” 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 “information gathering,” Harvey said.

“So the hospital will put together its requirements and hand them to the Corps,” 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��Ƶ.

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.

“When this gets going, this hospital project is going to be the largest hospital project in the United States,” 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.

“We can stabilize the building, but we can’t stabilize the hill,” Harvey said. “Maybe the VA being located at the top of a hill is something we should think about.”

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, “If Jim feels that way, we should talk.”

“We feel the communication has been going well,” Strickland said. “The 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.”

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