Children’s Health System Birmingham
Birmingham, Alabama
Our children deserve the best. That’s why our pediatric healthcare engineering not only gets our best thinking, it gets a piece of our heart. Take the new 772,000 square foot expansion of Children’s Health System of Alabama’s expanded campus in downtown Birmingham. This new hospital facility consists of a twelve-story Hospital building and a remote Central Utility Plant.
The Hospital Building includes private adolescent inpatient rooms, surgical services, a pharmacy, Cath Labs, CICU, NICU, Respiratory Therapy, Hematology/Oncology, Burn Units, PICU, Stem Cell and Emergency Services. Every square inch was a hospital engineering challenge. The ccrd team collaborated with the architectural design group and together we gave it our all.
Sustainability was one of these challenges. For instance, the Central Utility Plant is remotely located 1 1⁄2 blocks north of the new facility, connected to the hospital with an underground utility pathway. The CUP includes a 700 bhp central heating water plant to serve the facilities heating and domestic hot water needs. A 6,000 ton chilled water plant utilizing centrifugal chillers and an 800-ton heat pump chiller which provides unique heat recovery features and a variable-primary pumping scheme provides cooling service to the campus’ central station air handling units. Contained within the CUP are (3) two-megawatt emergency-standby diesel engine generators, with space for a future fourth two-megawatt unit. Trouble-shooting the plant design and making it renewable took our best thinking. At the end of the day, owner, architects and the ccrd team could not be prouder of the completed engineering project
MEP design and construction documents were produced in Revit. The project utilized an innovative, modified IPD method with the contracting and design teams sharing full BIM models on an ongoing basis. Just the kind of collaborative teamwork ccrd thrives on.
Architect: HKS, Inc.
Owner: Children’s Health System of Alabama
Project Size: 772,000 sf
Completed: 2011
Construction Cost: $275M
Scope of Services:
Mechanical
Electrical
Plumbing
Fire Protection
Communications