More Room To Save Lives

When Banner Health acquired the University of Arizona Health Network to form Banner University Medical Center (BUMC), they made a commitment to investing significant time and money on improving the campus in Tucson, Arizona. Part of that overall plan was constructing a new, 11-story tower to replace a 40-year-old portion of the existing hospital on the Tucson campus.

$400 million was slated for the new addition. The 689,000 square foot tower will include 336 private rooms, 22 operating rooms, imaging suits, and public spaces –certainly a much needed enhancement to what is considered one of the nation’s top learning medical centers and southern Arizona’s only Level 1 Trauma Center.

The hospital hired the joint venture team of Sundt/DPR to construct the tower, as well as an 18,600 square foot, two-story, central utility plant with six boilers, two dual-cell cooling towers, and four chillers. It is equipped to independently feed the new hospital tower with room for future expansion.

When it came to running chilled and hot water lines to the building from the central plant, Sundt/DPR needed a solution that would include the right materials, the best method, and an experienced team to overcome specific job site constraints. GLHN Architects and Engineers designed the project. Longtime partners, ISCO Industries and Rain for Rent, were brought in to provide pipe, fittings, and fusion equipment for the project. R. Directional Drilling came on board to handle the underground installation.

Drilling Through Deep Challenges

There were a couple of unique challenges around this project. Specifically, the location of the build site. As the only Level 1 Trauma Center in the region, it was also critical to keep all traffic patterns around the hospital intact during construction. “The site was located in an extremely congested area with very small
workspaces,” explained George Jones, Branch Manager for the Tucson Rain for Rent. “The cost associated with an open trench install was not practical. Horizontal directional drilling (HDD) made sense and the use of HDPE was necessary because of existing conditions and the short distance between the central plant and building tie-ins. We had to go as deep as 25 feet and back to surface within a 400-foot distance.”

Open trenching 28-feet deep would’ve added months to the completion time of the project and increased the cost significantly. Derek Reeve, Vice President of RDD agreed with Jones’ assessment saying, “HDD was an ideal solution due to the space and the fact that there is an existing building that had to remain occupied until after the new patient tower was erected. HDD allowed us to bore under that building while people were at their desks and place the pipe systems.”

HDPE the Only Option for Chilled Water

For the chilled water lines, ISCO provided 960 feet of insulated 30-inch DR11 IPS HDPE pipe. “For this project, reliability and longevity were important factors to consider,” said Denise Ernst, sales rep with ISCO. “The flexibility of the pipe, zero-leak rate, and limited maintenance made HDPE the obvious choice for the chilled water lines.”