TP Mechanical Contractors, Inc.

Owner:

Premier Health Partnes

Architect:

NBBJ

General Contractor:

Skanska Shook, JV

Scope Of Work

The Miami Valley Heart Tower project located at One Wyoming Street, Dayton, OH started in September 2008 was completed in December 2010 with a total construction value of $135 million. TP Mechanical was the plumbing and mechanical contractor for the project with a design-assist contract. The 12-story tower addition to the main campus of Miami Valley Hospital was constructed with 6 floors of cast-in-place concrete topped with structural steel and clad with a combination of precast and curtain-wall. The focus of the new tower is a comprehensive heart center featuring imaging services, cardiac testing, cardiac catheterization labs and heart surgery suites. The new tower also includes a total of 178 private patient rooms.

The greatest impact to this project was our approach to prefabrication. We knew with a job projected at 200,000 man-hours, we had to prefabricate everything possible in order to reduce the resources needed on site. This meant thinking outside the box and then following through with those ideas even when doubt, push-back and production challenges tested our resolve.

Prefabricating corridor rack systems and restroom pods were a huge part of what helped us meet the constraints of the project. From the beginning of the project, the corridor racks were viewed as a way to change the typical ‘stick build’ method of construction. We were tasked with completing this process from start to finish with no prior experience and with no one to rely on in the U.S. for best practice suggestions. Some of our management team made a trip to Europe to see how the process was being performed in a real time application.

The initial building design did not allow for corridor racks to be installed, as the services were too large to fit within a rack. We came up with an alternative design and got all of the other trades to approve the new design. A key element of the racks was engineering the seismic cabling and bracing out of the design. This was a huge success and also allowed for better stabilization during transportation. There were 120 different racks and 405 detail drawings for the services within the racks. We started out with more questions than answers, but in the end, all of the utilities in the corridors on the fourth through the ninth floors were prefabricated with our rack system.