Virtua West Jersey Hospital

Cost: $2 billion

With its 1973-era hospital in Voorhees, N.J., at capacity and ill-suited for further growth, Virtua Health decided that a replacement facility should do more than bridge three decades of health-care technology and practices. Given the highly dynamic evolution of medical science, treatment tools and services, Virtua needed a flexible platform that would enable it to meet the region’s heath-care needs well into the future.

The result is the new 657,110-sq-ft Virtua West Jersey Hospital, which will be the centerpiece of a high-profile 120-acre campus along Route 73 in Voorhees. Totaling approximately 370 beds, the new facility consists of an eight-story, 330,000-sq-ft patient tower with private rooms that offer expansive views to the outdoors and accommodate extended visits from family members.

The rooms will features amenities such as flat-screen monitors for Internet access, patient education and entertainment. There also is a communications system to easily contact nurses, order meals and request adjustments in room temperature.

A five-story, 350,000-sq-ft ancillary building will house areas for various surgical procedures. Also included will be separate emergency rooms for adults and for children and a special triage unit for mothers about to give birth. A glass-enclosed connector will link the two buildings.

The technological infrastructure at West Jersey Hospital is designed to all but eliminate the need for paper, helping speed diagnoses and treatment through the seamless exchange of digitized patient information. RFID systems will be used for tracking beds and patients, while two-way, high-definition viewing systems in the operating room will permit surgeons to consult with specialists and colleagues anywhere in the world.

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Complementing the new hospital’s technology-driven interior is a landscaped campus designed to enhance the healing environment. Features will include outdoor dining areas, walking paths, retention ponds and preserved wetlands. Patients and visitors will also be able to take advantage of several retail centers located throughout the campus, offering gift items and products tailored to patients’ medial needs.

Just as West Jersey Hospital’s vision of service is forward-looking, so too is its foundation. To help stabilize the site’s sandy soil in the event of liquefaction from an earthquake, more than 3,000 stone columns supporting spread footings were sunk to an average depth of 55 ft.

“This is a new use of this technology in this area,” says Bill Barton, project executive with Turner Construction. He adds that the project’s biggest challenge proved to be acquiring the 5,000 tons of steel for the hospital’s structural system.

“The market was so constrained and mill capacity limited when we started,” he says. “We devised a method to buy the steel early on based on the concept drawings, then adjusted the order as we went forward. Had we not used that approach, construction progress would have been delayed.”

Enclosing the steel frame, slab-on-deck structure will be a 373,000-sq ft exterior wall system consisting of a 127,000-sq-ft curtain wall, 65,000 sq ft of cast-stone panels, 58,000 sq ft of wood-composite panels and 28,000 sq ft of concrete masonry blocks. Approximately 16,000 sq ft of louvers will help regulate light and heat loading.

One advantage enjoyed by the construction team since work began in August is the spaciousness of a virtually unrestricted greenfield site. “Having ample room for a laydown area and parking for workers is helpful,” Barton adds.

To keep the project moving forward, Turner split the trades into multiple packages to take advantage of different contractors’ administrative resources and their core field personnel. The hospital is currently on track to open in March 2011.

Team Box

Owner: Virtua Health, Voorhees, N.J.
Project Manager: Hammes Co., Brookfield, Wisc.
Architect/Engineer: Hammel, Green & Abrahamson
Civil Engineer: Dewberry, New York
Construction Manager: Turner Construction Co., New York