Kitchell and CannonDesign are working together on the new UC San Diego Jacobs Medical Center, a three hospital facility including women and infants, cancer care, and specialty surgery (photo below). Both Kitchell and CannonDesign are passionate about designing and building the future of the healthcare.

We are delighted to share this article penned by Deb Sheehan, Executive Director of CannonDesign’s Client Strategies Team.

Three key trends defining the early days of healthcare in 2016

The Renewed Fight on Cancer President Obama’s announcement of the country’s renewed focus on fighting and defeating cancer during his State of the Union address earlier this year is good news for so many of the mission-driven organizations we work with that are focused on the disease. The new focus will bring enhanced resources to those organizations at the cutting edge of the fight, helping them advance their most successful treatment and research efforts. To begin the launch of this new effort to defeat cancer, Vice President Joe Biden toured the Penn Medicine Center for Advanced Celllular Therapies I wrote about last month. He and other leaders see Penn Medicine’s work on personalized medicine as critical to the success of their effort.

Beyond that, other organizations like ProHealth Care are focused on elevating patient engagement strategies to enhance care for cancer patients. The organization’s new freestanding ambulatory cancer center is focused on educating patients about how to avoid ED visits, inpatient stays and missed clinic appointments while also helping them develop strong support groups and increase their strength during chemo treatment. At Kaiser Permanente, the organization has developed its Kraemer Radiation Oncology Center with above ground radiation treatment centers that allow for patients to access natural light, views to nature and soothing interior colors during their difficult treatment sessions. This is a departure from traditional design that always placed these centers below ground to accommodate heavy equipment and to shield radiation. Kaiser is leading the way on tackling these challenges and enhance care for its patients.

All of these efforts – from the President’s declaration to the tireless efforts of health providers around the world to advance research, care and treatment options inspire me as we head further into 2016.

New Delivery Solutions for Health Providers Health providers face increased pressure to design and construct facilities that are high-quality, high-performance and cost-efficient all wrapped in one. Thankfully, the industry is beginning to advance key single-source delivery options like Design-Led Construction (DLC) that make this possible. In a new piece from Building Design + Construction, my colleague shares reasons the C-Suite should care about DLC relative to its ability to accelerate speed-to-market, achieve guaranteed price, reduce inefficiencies and allow organizations to greatly reduce the risk associated with these projects.

Allegheny Health Network recently leveraged DLC to create its Wexford Health & Wellness Pavilion in western Pennsylvania. DLC helped them achieve a 22-month design and construction schedule (construction completed on time in 18 months) while also adhering to an early established $57.4 million guaranteed maximum price and incurring $0 in error and omission change orders. This kind of streamlined delivery not only makes life easier for health providers, it helps them delivery high-quality care to their communities sooner and at a cost that doesn’t detract from other organizational goals.

Stronger Focus on Health Sciences Education With the rapid evolution of healthcare comes the need to adapt how we educate students to help them fill the medical jobs of the future. Malcolm X College in Chicago is responding to this need with its new School of Health Sciences. The 1-million sf facility can accommodate up to 20,000 students and houses state-of-the-art technologies and services including:

• A virtual hospital complete with operating and emergency rooms

• Nursing, radiography, respiratory care and science labs

• An ambulance for EMT simulations

• A free dental hygiene clinic to open in 2016

• An exercise and sports sciences area that features a 900-seat gymnasium, two therapy pools and one lap pool

The new School of Health Sciences will help close the gap between the current market of qualified healthcare professionals and the projected 84,000 healthcare jobs in the region over the next decade. The facility is informed by experts spanning education, healthcare, science, urban planning, architecture and engineering– and also required strong collaboration with key partners including AOR Moody Nolan and CM Jacobs Management Co.

These are just a few of the exciting developments already making 2016 a strong year for the advancement of healthcare.

Please click here for Deb’s original article.

We can all agree the Egyptians knew a thing or two about architecture and construction. After all, the Great Pyramids at Giza are one of the world’s most extraordinary engineering achievements. What strategy did the Egyptians use to accomplish this feat? It’s a good bet that the design and construction was guided and executed with a single point of responsibility: a “master builder,” today known as “design-build.”

Collaboration and trust: true markers of design-build

One single point of responsibility. One contract. These are the hallmarks of design-build. But it’s the collaboration and trust behind the contract and delivery method that truly defines design-build and makes it an ideal option to meet schedule, cost and quality goals.

To ensure we not only successfully embraced this relatively new delivery method, but to truly excel and lead, we developed the Design-Build Center of Excellence (DBCEx) in 2009, to educate, mentor and advise Kitchell project teams with an ongoing, hands-on role: Design-build Done Right™ (the Design Build Institute of America’s raison d’etre). The DBCEx is led by an advisory board of six experienced design-build professionals, each active members in DBIA with the Designated Design-Build Professional accreditation.

“As an architect who has been working for construction companies for most of my career, I cannot overstate the value of the design-build delivery model,” said Kitchell Director of QA and one of the founders of the DBCEx Bill Vandrovec. “The notion of not having to redraw anything in a plan is, in a word, staggering. That constructability reviews are ‘baked in’ to the early stages of design is a tremendous benefit to the entire team, especially, of course, to the owner.” It is for these reasons, among many others, the Design-Build Center for Excellence was formed.

As a result of our investment in mastering design-build, some of our most successful projects, 65 of them totaling $6.5 billion in California, Arizona, Nevada and Iowa, have been created via this delivery method. Two significant projects, California Health Care Facility (Stockton, Calif.) and Dignity Health’s Chandler Regional Medical Center Dignity (Chandler, Ariz.), were singled out by the Design Build Institute of America with its distinguished Design-Build awards. Chandler Regional Medical Center Chief Operating Officer Jane Hanson captured the value of design-build with this comment: “The team exemplified collaboration, integrity and excellence in execution. Its members worked together and with us and the architect to the benefit of patients, healthcare providers, hospital administrators and the community.” We hear similar comments on every design-build project.

Taking our design-build expertise one big step further with education

Our close work with architects and owners prompted us to create a comprehensive design-build curriculum to keep us at the forefront of design-build as it evolves.

Our comprehensive training comprises eight distinct modules over the course of 20 continuing education hours. For example, Module 2 focuses on Team Establishment and Leadership, exploring the dynamics and techniques of creating a high performance integrated team and how to draw out the best attributes of individual members, while keeping owners engaged as full practicing collaborators and partners. For our 2016 educational series kick-off, Dr. Barbara Jackson, a guiding force in the design and construction arena, shared her philosophy harvesting input from all of the various players to ensure success with a crowd of design-build enthusiasts from across Kitchell.

“Kitchell is a company with a very diverse offering of construction services,” said Kitchell Regional Executive Dave Kirn, another DBCEx co-founder. “We work for both public and private clients in many market segments. The goal of the DBCEx is to bring this diverse experience into focus and educate/train our staff as the knowledge and experience grows.  We share lessons learned and points of view from many diverse perspectives to grow knowledge exponentially rather than individually.”

Or as the great philosopher Phil Jackson once said so eloquently, “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”