HOK’s Paul Morgan and Clark Construction’s Barbara Wagner coauthored a Health Facilities Management article describing how a hybrid design-build approach enabled them to streamline delivery of a hospital replacement wing at California’s Ventura County Medical Center.
Excerpted from Health Facilities Management:
Too often, traditional delivery methods result in siloed workflows that create conflicts and costly change orders. The traditional design-bid-build approach also can create gaps between design development and construction, which leads to budget overruns and schedule delays. A design-build methodology, on the other hand, aligns design and construction goals, minimizes budget creep and maximizes value for the client.
While this model is not new, incorporating an integrated delivery model with incremental permitting and a collaborative review process creates a hybrid that can yield big dividends for the building owner. That is exactly what Clark Construction and design partner HOK did at California’s Ventura County Medical Center (VCMC) hospital replacement wing to deliver the project in just 48 months.
An overarching goal of the project was to demonstrate to California’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) how to successfully deliver the state’s first design-build hospital program without bridging documents. To achieve this, the design team had to incorporate exceptional design-build best practices, essentially “design-build done right” from procurement through project completion.
Schedule, program and design excellence became the project’s three primary drivers. The alignment of these elements required a highly collaborative approach with construction, design and client feedback informing every major decision. From early on in the process, the design-build team balanced the project’s budget and goals with the design vision, working to streamline scheduling, trade sequencing and constructability.