DPR Completes Addition and Expansion Project for Medical Center, Awarded Two More Projects for Repeat Customer

Conducting a steam utility tie-in at 2 a.m. with an emergency Caesarean section (C-section) going on in the next room. Maintaining strict Infectious Disease Control (IDC) practices to ensure the health and safety of patients and staff. Building toward an aggressive predetermined delivery date.

Those were just a handful of the many challenges that the project team faced during the addition of a 5,000-sq.-ft. cardiac catheterization suite, 450-sq.-ft. C-section room expansion, and the build out of 29 medical/surgical patient rooms, totaling 9,600 sq. ft., to Round Rock Medical Center for St. David’s HealthCare Partnership, a partnership between HCA and St. David’s HealthCare System.

“One of the biggest challenges when adding a new cath lab onto an existing surgery center is preserving the sterile environment through proper infection control procedures,” said Wayne Fontenot of DPR. “We worked closely with the hospital’s Interim Life Safety committee and actually received a citation for exemplary performance. In fact, the committee requested copies of DPR’s IDC documentation, and they have incorporated some of our processes into their permanent plan for use on all their projects.”

DPR’s IDC program utilized negative air machines to create a vacuum in the rooms under construction, with the contaminated air ventilated out of the building, and an alarm system to constantly monitor the room’s air pressure. The project team constructed a pressure differential monitoring system using gauges and alarms that annunciates when there is a change in the room’s pressurization as an added precaution. DPR is currently using the monitoring approach on other hospital projects in Austin.

Along with infection control, which is always a top priority in hospital construction, DPR had a distinct deadline for delivering the cardiac catheterization addition that also has been certified as a heart surgery room and includes a large control room, one pre-operation room and two recovery areas. According to Fontenot, while the addition was being built, procedures were conducted in a temporary mobile facility that required a 60-day cancellation period. A day before anticipated completion, the mobile facility was being taken away, and cases had been scheduled for the new lab.

“The patients and doctors were lined up for the new facility,” said Fontenot. “There was no way to miss the delivery date.”

Completed on time in a little more than nine months, the successful project also resulted in the recent award of a 600-sq.-ft. nuclear medicine and “hot lab” addition and a 500-sq.-ft. CT scan remodel, as well as a 125,000-sq.-ft. expansion to the hospital, including a three-story surgical suite and new patient tower.

For Fontenot, the “true satisfaction came from the staff and seeing how they felt about their new facility.”