The project: The state-of-the art Eastpark Medical Center (EMC) provides new ambulatory and outpatient care and services on UW Healthcare’s East Campus (UW). This building serves as the anchor for a new greenfield campus for UW Health. The design was fully integrated with planning for three future buildings at this site and IMEG is providing engineering design and services for the six-story, two-tower, 469,000-sf building.

The team examined various approaches to achieve UW’s sustainable design goals. They considered both conventional systems and electric-only heating and cooling systems and evaluated geothermal energy, ice storage, and other decarbonized approaches. The team ultimately chose conventional gas-fired systems, but they prepared the building for full electrification in
the future and added heat recovery chillers to reach 20% partial electrification from the start at the site.

MEP challenge: Meet sustainability goals for LEED certification, Energy Star certification, and WELL v4.1. Solutions: IMEG incorporated a variety of sustainable design features, including an optimized facade, two 900-ton high-efficiency water-cooled chillers, a 275-ton dry cooler for winter chilled water load, condensing boilers, in-floor perimeter radiant heat, and a 1MW carport photovoltaic solar array. This photovoltaic system was designed to match the energy use for the proton therapy center, effectively delivering carbon-free cancer care to all the patients who use this facility. The design also recovered heat from the
proton therapy system to warm radiant floors along all the edge areas of the building and waiting rooms.

Additional MEP highlights included heating via a central hot water heating system featuring six 6,000 MBH high-efficiency hot water boilers; 13 variable volume rooftop air handling units with a total of 570,000 CFM of capacity; and specialty exhaust systems for laboratories, pharmacies, and hoods throughout the facility.

Electrical design highlights: The building will be served by five 3000-amp electrical services, each rated at 480Y/277V 3-phase 4-4- wire, with two serving the north tower and three serving the south tower. Additional electrical features include:

  • Two 1750kW emergency generators with on-board digital paralleling
  • Electronic power monitoring system on distribution equipment to track receptacle, lighting, motor, fan, and miscellaneous loads separately per the LEED Measurement and Verification credit
  • Two 100 KW centralized flywheel UPS systems to serve building IT and security needs

IMEG’s technology design included provisions for outside plant fiber connection to the existing campus network; structured cabling system for telephone and data; wireless access points; real time location system; distributed antenna system; nurse call; paging and sound masking; access control system; and a video surveillance system.

Project delivery: The construction manager at risk (CMAR) delivery required an early commitment of the design and planning team to achieve the fast-track schedule. Week-long meetings were held each month during program validation to refine the owner’s needs and develop individual department space programs. As part of these workshops, IMEG led meetings to summarize decisions made during user group meetings and to facilitate detailed engineering system decisions. As the project progressed through design, meetings with the owner, architect, and contractor were held each week to discuss design progression, system selections, and value analysis cost control measures to maintain the project budget. During the schematic design phase, the design and construction team utilized an “IPD-light” project delivery, with IMEG, the owner, architect, CM, and sub-contractors sharing an office on campus for “Big Room” collaboration. Integrated teams and lean principles such as Target Value Design and Choose by Advantage were utilized to complete design development.

Expected outcome: EMC is designed to achieve 15% energy savings and 30% water savings over baseline code. Once open in late 2024, the facility will utilize innovative care coordination to provide patients with same-day access to world-class clinicians, life-saving therapies, cutting-edge technologies, and world-changing clinical trials.