The George Washington University Hospital ICU project involved the renovation of a portion of the existing 6th floor into a 16-bed neurological ICU unit. The $6.5 million project converted space previously used by the University to hospital functions that includes eight newly licensed beds and eight transferred beds. The project used the Integrated Lean Project delivery method.
A unique challenge to this project was working directly over the operational 5th Floor ICU. Since the 6th floor ICU was the first unit to have private floor-mounted patient bathrooms in each room, we had to closely coordinate phasing to allow us to work within the 5th floor patient rooms for underslab plumbing without disrupting patient care. In addition, we had to tie-in to critical systems within the hospital including the fire alarm, mechanical, electrical, nurse call, plumbing, med gas and pneumatic tube. This required strong communications between the team, engineering, and the hospital staff to ensure no unanticipated outages or lapse in service.
Skanska was directly responsible to lead the team in procuring building permits from the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA), ensuring successful inspections, and managing the DC Department of Health inspection in conjunction with the hospital. We were also involved with the move-in coordination leading up to first patient day.
The project began in November 2013 with design planning. Preconstruction was completed in March 2014. Construction began with demolition in March 2014 and wrapped up for occupancy on October 1, 2014.
