Each year at the International Summit & Exhibition on Health Facility Planning, Design & Construction (PDC), the American Hospital Association’s American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE) presents the Vista awards for exceptional teamwork on new health care construction, renovation and infrastructure projects.
This year’s winning projects are University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center at Mission Bay; Memorial Hospital at Gulfport (Miss.) patient tower expansion/renovation; and St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center's combined heat and power (CHP) plant, Syracuse, N.Y.
“This is the biggest award I expect to get in my career,” says longtime ASHE member Rick Medlin, project director for Roy Anderson Corp., Gulfport, Miss., the construction management firm for Memorial Hospital at Gulfport’s renovation and expansion project.
The honor is twofold, says John Moynihan, CEO and managing partner of Cogen Power Technologies, Latham, N.Y., and CHP program manager for the infrastructure project at St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center. First, the award acknowledges the health center’s willingness to embrace new technology in undertaking the CHP project. “Second, it recognizes our close-knit design and construction team,” which was able to deliver on the promises of the project, he says.
A sense of community and common purpose is essential to a highly successful health facility project, says Stuart Eckblad, vice president, major construction projects, UCSF Medical Center. The UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay team worked hard to ensure that it had “a higher aspiration” for the project that went beyond ordinary teamwork, he says. “You don’t do a project of this size, with this kind of result, without this kind of collaboration.”
The first major success of the Mission Bay project was meeting community health care needs, says Ray Trebino, project executive for DPR Construction, Redwood City, Calif., the project’s general contractor and construction manager. The second major success was developing an integrated project-delivery method that can serve as a model for future health care design and construction teams. “Awards like the Vista award allow us a forum to share the story of what we’ve been able to do,” Trebino says. “Hopefully, others can benefit from it.”
Amy Eagle is a freelance writer based in Homewood, Ill., who specializes in health care-related topics. She is a regular contributor to Health Facilities Management.
