Project Profiles

ACH was building  a new hospital 150 miles from their own mothership in Little Rock so the geographic hurdles were significant. The owners had one vision while the design team had another. Neither stakeholder understood the upcoming challenges with a distant care location.

Leadership and Consultancy:
Scope, schedule, budget, clinical support development, building design.
Project Management:
Team charters, transparent process, milestones, construction and coordination with hospital facilities and operations, scope to completion.
Structure and Process:
20 operations teams and steering committee.
C-Suite Support:Supported C-suite with management program for successful and regulatory compliant project delivery.

I listened between the lines, asked hard questions and built a bridge of understanding between teams, designers, owners, staff, attorneys, architects and health care experts. From a compliance perspective, health care expertise allowed me to translate frequently, helping stakeholders understand various compliance issues and what that meant for the project, the timeline, the budget and the operations. From a business standpoint, I helped them outline how the two locations would work together with efficient use of roles and departments. Did we need a recruiter at both places? What about a legal department?

A scalable, 280K square foot hospital with 24 inpatient beds,  five operating rooms, an emergency department and an outpatient clinics, along with a master plan to add buildings in the future.

In 2016, St. Charles was planning a four-story expansion of the system’s biggest hospital, including 36 ICU beds.  After the presidential election, predicted changes to the Affordable Care Act disrupted their reimbursement structure and the state of Oregon limited state funding. St. Charles had several leadership changes as well.

Ramp Up:
Understood current state, met with key stakeholders, established project controls and dashboard, developed integrated schedule.
Final Design and Permitting:
OAC meetings, safety and quality programs, permit facilitation, application, submittals and issuance.
Initiate Construction Oversight:
Managed overall budget, schedule, quality, and risk; oversee contractor initiatives, monitor funds spent against project budget and facilitate communication between stakeholders.
Procurement:
Equipment categorization and special engineering, owner and contractor procured equipment.
Operational Readiness:
Coordinated Substantial Completion, TCO and CofO.
Move In and Turnover:
Support for operational go-live, transition planning, efficient stock and staff placement, project commissioning, closeout.

Offering data analysis, I examined volumes, operations and the project plan and saw a clear gap. They were building too many ICU beds and no inpatient beds, and that didn’t make sense to meet long term strategy. The new scope would be a three-story building including 24 ICU beds, 28 inpatient beds and 1 floor for future buildout. A collaborative style, clear expectations, tight budget, established boundaries, decisive approach and construction expertise allowed us to accelerate the design process (8 weeks) and continue with the same permit and not lose time. I inspired disparate teams toward individual and group accountability.

We decided what needed to be built, maximized our spend and created the right type of patient care space. The project completed under budget with an increase in St. Charles’s ability to see patients. The client saw a 7x return on every dollar spent on Owner’s Rep services.  

In 2009, I was asked to manage a massive structural renovation at a breakneck pace–11 new stories, a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) expansion and a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) expansion–all in very tight quarters. As with any construction project, there was chaos and inconvenience, and the current health care facilities were being compromised. Tight communication, collaboration, and the ability to raise our hand without disrupting a room full of newborn babies, was critical.  

Project & Program Management:
Monitored dependencies, delegated tasks, hired resources, managed budget, removed roadblocks, modeled best practices, managed conflict, and ensured milestones were met from concept to completion across all levels of hospital management.
Mentorship & Coaching:
Coached, mentored, motivated and supervised project team members and contractors, and influenced them to take positive action and accountability for their assigned work.
Resource Management:
Determined and assessed need for additional staff and/or consultants and made the appropriate recruitments if necessary during project cycle.
Partnerships:
Built, developed, and grew any business relationships vital to the success of the project.
Operations: Defined project scope, schedule, cost, resources, quality, and deliverables in collaboration with hospital leadership and clinical management.
Stakeholder Support:
Effectively communicated project expectations to team members and stakeholders as well as defined project success criteria and disseminated throughout project life cycle.
Budget:
Drafted and submitted budget proposals, and recommended subsequent budget changes where necessary.
Risk Management:
Proactively managed changes in project scope, identified potential crises, and devised contingency plans.

For this project, I utilized Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). In typical construction project management, the building owner holds separate contracts for the design team and general contractor.  The communication style is less focused on problem-solving and more about taking turns “weighing in”. IPD, in contrast, is a three way collaboration that hinges completely on consensus. This process ensures proper evaluation, prevents escalation of issues, strengthens stakeholder relationships, reduces blame and streamlines the decision-making process. We also used a real-time feedback system, allowing the contractors and architect to learn from their mistakes and evolve their performance on the job. IPD helped this project progress quickly and a multi-phased approach allowed the hospital to remain operational during expansion.

A new 356,000-square-foot, 11-story East Tower as well as a three-story, 13,000-square-foot addition to the ICUs while they were in operations. We also remodeled  87,000-square-feet of the existing hospital and ambulatory space including PICU, NICU, CICU, CPCU, Hematology/BMT, pharmacy, and back-of-house support spaces. This project finished on time and on budget–even with added scope and became a success story for multiple Integrated Project Delivery studies.