For Customers, Communities and Employees

According to Ken Dychtwald, PhD, founder and CEO of Age Wave LLC, in San Francisco, “the entire aging experience will be different for people now than it has been for people in the past.” The team at Banner Estrella Medical Center understood that in order to meet the needs of a growing, aging population and co-create a new ground-up hospital for the future, they needed a clear picture of what healthcare would look like in years to come.

Starting with a blank slate, the team, driven by Banner Estrella Medical Center CEO Connie Harmsen, listened to visionaries discuss how advances in technology are blurring the lines between surgery, radiology and medical imaging. They learned about the importance of providing a “healing environment” that focuses on preventative quality care rather than acute interventions. They collaborated to design a hospital that will offer the flexibility, adaptability and efficiencies required by medicine and healthcare procedures of tomorrow.

This type of up-front collaboration is what makes great projects. The type of project that you look back on at the end of a long construction career and take special pride in, because you were a part of something bigger, a new hospital that will serve future generations.

DPR exists to “build great things,” including healthy environments.

From a new hospital for Banner Estrella in Phoenix, AZ to an expansion of a heart wing for Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento, CA to smaller jobs for Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, CA and Seton Medical Center in Austin, TX, we leverage our extensive technical expertise — collaborating and communicating with customers — to build better, more efficient facilities. Working closely with California’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD), we also keep abreast of the latest in building safety and seismic standards. And, we learn from experts, such as Andrew Streifel from the University of Minnesota, regarding infection control so that our teams can better assess and manage risk when working in the highly sensitive healthcare environment.

To provide a healthier place for our communities, DPR promotes the green building effort for the construction industry. As an active member of the U.S. Green Building Council since 1999, we have Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED™) trained and accredited professionals in each office. We help customers identify opportunities to build high-performance green buildings that promote energy efficiency, water conservation and a higher quality indoor environment for employees.

We also help ourselves to create healthier environments for our own employees and utilized our green building experience to develop DPR’s new Sacramento office building. Our new 52,300-sq.-ft. building is being developed jointly with our insurance broker. It broke ground in October and will feature increased natural lighting, compressors powered by magnets rather than oil, and sustainable, non-toxic materials to offer people a better place to work.

DPR values its customers, communities and employees and that is exhibited well in our support of our healthcare customers and promotion of Green Construction in the U.S.