Viewpoint By Jim Pullen, Project Director

The key to Kitchell’s success in building the Cardon Children’s Medical Center was our ability to coordinate the efforts of many people and then effectively communicate them.  Although Kitchell has a history of working on large, complex projects, this was the first one where every department in the hospital was directly affected by our work

Creating a formal process

Because of the project’s scope, we quickly realized the importance of creating a formal process to achieve our number one priority: keeping the existing facility up and running during construction. 

 The process included creating forms, a spreadsheet with key item numbers, a list of affected departments, a reason for our actions, details and floor plans of areas in which we were working. We also included a backup plan for each item and space to record key lessons learned.  We called it the impact matrix, and developed the process on site.

 Preplanning and communication

Thanks to this matrix, hospital stakeholders weren’t surprised when we shut down power, or blocked parking spaces or when road access changed. We preplanned with the affected departments and communicated information up to the point of execution.  We sent weekly notes to the public relations contact to include in the hospital newsletter and post in public areas.  And we contacted doctors in advance with information that would affect them.

The impact matrix was an effective tool that we have added to our toolbox. Feedback from our clients indicates that they like it as much as we do.