Interview with Ruben Cañas, Healthcare Project Director, from our Perspective newsletter Volume 5, Quarter 4 article: An extremely healthy track record.
A lot of folks recognize MacDonald-Miller as the healthcare leader in the Seattle area – yet, where else are we doing work?
Over the past several years we have positioned ourselves as the healthcare leader in the Seattle area. Fortunately, the volume and variety of work performed (large to small TI’s, retrofits, compliance, med-gas and general facility support) over the past 8+ years has allowed us to become extremely diverse in our ability to support our healthcare clients, not to mention our “depth chart” relative to designing, executing and managing healthcare projects has grown substantially. Through experience, depth and established reputation, we’ve been able expand our healthcare footprint both North (Zone 4) and South (Zone 5). Healthcare projects in Zone 4 and 5 will represent more than 30% of the total volume for our Healthcare Group in 2017/2018.
What strengths do we bring to healthcare systems (or hospitals)?
One of our biggest strengths as a full-service company is tapping into the knowledge and experience within the company. Hospital design and construction can be somewhat of a balancing act, managing the technical needs of healthcare, the comfort of patients, and compliance requirements can be extremely difficult. With our experience supporting large in-patient hospitals and surgery centers, we can integrate all the lessons learned, (what works, and what doesn’t), early on in our design and provide informed consultation to our clients that stretches well beyond mechanical construction.
Tell us about a recent win.
We were recently awarded a very large retrofit project at Seattle Children’s, two large aging centrifugal fans each rated at 84,000 cfm. Concerned about the fans failing condition, Seattle Children’s and their facility staff had a budget established with a competitor for replacement, but there were two major issues: 1) The budget was more than they could get their heads around, and 2) there was no real plan on how they would be replaced, and what the impact would be to patients and to the critical services supported by the fans (sterile processing and compounding pharmacy).
Seattle Children’s asked us to take a quick pass at a budget, and through our experience in fan array retrofits we arrived at a design and budget they could afford. Additionally, we provided a detailed plan on how we would execute the project and what the impact would be at each phase of the retrofit.
Anything else you would like folks to know about our healthcare team?
We do a lot of awesome work at MacMiller, and the healthcare team that works out of First Hill is just that, pretty darn awesome. There are huge compliments I can give to all the individuals that work on our healthcare jobs, but the one really cool thing is that we all speak the same language. When we talk about projects and work through tasks/issues/planning internally and externally, the dialect in which we communicate is healthcare, and every individual genuinely cares about positive actions and positive outcomes. It’s truly awesome.
Some of the interesting projects and sustaining work we are performing in Zones 4 and 5:
ZONE 4 (North Seattle, Everett and North Sound)
Seattle Children’s
- 164,000 CFM fan array retrofits
- 164,000 CFM fan array retrofits
- Ongoing critical environment air surveys
- Design-Assist Tenant Improvements
- NICU, Design-Assist TI, 26,500 SF
Northwest Hospital & Medical Center
- Humidification
- Surgery AHU Upgrades
The Everett Clinic Design-Build Tenant Improvement
Swedish Ballard Campus Heating Water Consolidation
ZONE 5 (Tacoma, Olympia and the South Sound)
CHI Franciscan Health
- St. Anthony Hospital, Gig Harbor, Acute Care Expansion (26,000 SF TI)
- St. Joseph Medical Center, Tacoma, Multiple TI’s
- Bonney Lake Medical Oncology Infusion Clinic, Design-Build TI