Joel Bass
When DPR’s Joel Bass and his wife Wei-Bing Chen arrived at UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay because Chen was in labor, the staff told them that it might be helpful to go for a walk around campus. It was a familiar walk for Joel Bass, who was a superintendent on the award-winning 878,000-sq.ft. ground-up hospital complex renowned for its integrated project delivery (IPD) approach and state-of-the-art patient care. After walking the very same halls where he did countless job walks during the years he worked on the hospital, the parents-to-be sat on a bench and reflected on what was to come.

On March 12, 2015, the world welcomed Tyler Bass, the first DPR baby to be born at UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay. It was serendipitous, as the hospital had only moved deliveries into the new hospital a few days prior.

“It brought together so many things. At DPR, we try to be integral and indispensable to our communities, and having your baby in the building you built is a way to truly become a part of the building, and use it in the way it was intended,” said Joel Bass. “It’s important to see value and meaning in the work that you do, and know that you’re contributing to something larger than yourself. It was a special experience to share what we built with my family.”

Today, Tyler Bass is three years old–old enough to recognize UCSF’s helipad from nearby Highway 280 as “the place where dad works.” With his own hard hat, vest and boots, the toddler gravitates toward anything related to construction. He’s fascinated by cars, trucks and equipment, and is always lobbying his dad to take him to the jobsite.

Joel Bass now works a few blocks away from the hospital where Tyler Bass was born, as he and the DPR team build UCSF’s new 270,000-sq.-ft. Joan and Sanford I. Weill Neurosciences Building, which will bring together lab research programs and clinical care in what will become one of the largest neuroscience complexes in the world.

On his last visit, Tyler Bass proudly told his dad that he wants to work with him some day, a dream that makes Joel Bass smile–and a dream that might come true.

Dan Crutchfield
When DPR’s Dan Crutchfield met his wife Lauren Crutchfield at McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland, he had no idea what big moments life would have in store for him at the hospital a mile away.

As a superintendent at DPR, Dan Crutchfield has worked on five straight projects for Carroll Hospital Center, ranging from outpatient suites to the expansion of the labor and delivery suites, often coordinating construction work within live hospital units. On Nov. 25, 2017, after enduring a long labor and delivery process, Lauren Crutchfield gave birth to Josephine (Josie) Crutchfield in one of the very same suites built by her father.

Dan Crutchfield still works within the same building, as the DPR team builds an expansion of the hospital’s couplet care program, which enables mothers and newborns to stay together for their entire hospital stay. Nurses, doctors and hospital staff run into him almost every day and check in for updates about his wife and daughter.

“Now that I am renovating and expanding the facility where Josie was born, I gained an appreciation for what the doctors, nurses and medical staff do every day,” said Dan Crutchfield. “I’m able to see it from two different perspectives, both professional and personal.”

A native of Carroll County, Maryland, Dan Crutchfield grew up his whole life in the community that Carroll Hospital Center serves and finds great meaning in building a facility that will positively impact so many people that he knows–including his own family. Josie Crutchfield is now six months old, and when she’s old enough, Dan Crutchfield plans to explain to her how she was born in the hospital that he built.

“I wasn’t just a contractor at a hospital. All the work I put into the expansion and renovations, I was making it better for her, and for families like ours. It was special, and a project that I will always remember.”