To honor teamwork, communication and overall excellence, the American Hospital Association’s American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE) presents its annual Vista Awards for team-based planning, design and construction.
This year’s winning projects are Mercy Hospital Joplin (Mo.), for new construction; Shawnee Mission Medical Center, Merriam, Kan., for renovation; and Nebraska Medicine, Omaha, for infrastructure.
Unlike other awards in the field, the Vista Awards judges look beyond aesthetic points and mirror the process by which hospitals are built by focusing on the key players who are involved from inception to completion. “Vista Awards are based on demonstrated teamwork delivering a successful project,” says Dana E. Swenson, PE, MBA, SASHE, chair of the Vista Awards and senior vice president and chief of facilities at UMass Memorial Health Care, Worcester, Mass. “When judging projects, teamwork that extends beyond the planning, design and construction teams, and encompasses the larger organization, the stakeholders, and the community are the health care projects that shine.”
Swenson and the other Vista Awards judges — Randy Regier, AIA, president of Taylor Design, Irvine, Calif.; C. Scott Shipp, PE, vice president, RDK Engineers, An NV5 Company, Charlotte, N.C.; and Sean M. Mulholland, PE, CHFM, CHC, director of planning, design and construction at Children’s Hospital Colorado, Aurora — found three particularly good examples of such projects this year:
- Community service and inclusion was a big part of the Mercy team’s mission to quickly and effectively fill a void left when its previous facility was destroyed in a natural disaster.
- The Shawnee Mission Medical Center team, likewise, faced logistical challenges of maintaining operations while adding new spaces for community access.
- The team at Nebraska Medicine met a regulatory mandate and maintained continuous patient services by precisely coordinating a major electrical system overhaul.
