Kernan Medical Office Building
A 54,000-square-foot, three-story medical office building in Jacksonville where BIMWerx managed 3D coordination, trade modeling, and shop drawings for complex healthcare building systems.
Complex Healthcare Coordination Before Installation
The Kernan Medical Office Building required careful coordination across multiple building systems, healthcare requirements, trade contractors, and future buildout planning.
Kernan Medical Office Building
At 54,000 square feet, the three-story Kernan Medical Office Building, also known as Jax Spine & Pain Centers, is currently the largest multispecialty freestanding ambulatory surgery center in Jacksonville. The building’s structure consists of tilt-wall construction with steel columns and beams and concrete on a metal deck.
The project was fully designed in Revit, including the architectural and structural design, and all building systems, including mechanical, plumbing, electrical, fire protection, and technology. The contractor trusted the BIMWerx team to manage the 3D coordination and model, coordinate, and produce shop drawings for the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing trade contractors.
Most of the work completed is on the first floor, where the ambulatory services are located. The BIMWerx team also worked on the core and shell of floors two and three in preparation for tenant buildout.
Florida ambulatory surgical centers like this project are more complex than standard medical office buildings because they must meet the regulations of the Florida Department of Health, which includes the FGI Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities. These regulations require increased air filtration, minimum air exchanges, and air pressure relationships to adjacent areas.
Additionally, medical gas and vacuum systems, as well as higher electrical loads, including more conduits and conduit paths, are required in ambulatory office buildings to provide the necessary care to patients.
Coordinating the Details Before the Field
These images reflect the level of project information, modeling, coordination, and visual understanding needed for a highly technical healthcare facility.
Coordinating a Healthcare Project With Special Requirements
Being an ACHA project with special requirements in addition to standard healthcare needs, careful consideration was needed when coordinating the overhead conditions.
Certain clearances had to be maintained, and access to valves, pull boxes, mechanical controls, cable trays, and other critical systems had to be accounted for. All access points needed to be close to the ceiling, even though there was not enough space to run all systems at that elevation.
The coordination also needed to account for the future expansion of the MRI room, which included several large conduits, piping to the space, and a large quench vent duct running through to the roof of the building.
Saving Time by Solving Issues Earlier
The process took approximately 12 weeks and close to 800 hours to complete. The vast amount of duct, piping, and conduits above the ceiling was laid out and installed much easier utilizing the efforts of the BIMWerx team.
That coordination saved nearly 4 weeks of installation time. The team caught so many issues early that it is nearly impossible to quantify the savings achieved.
Project Impact
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