Life in the Fast Lane

Construction team provides speedy
delivery for medical center owner

By Hilary Ruesch

Familiarity, experience and commitment to a fast-track delivery helped Beyer Construction and Welman Architects make the Advanced Healthcare Mequon East Center project a success.

The 26,000-square-foot center, which features a women's care area, cosmetology facilities, extensive X-ray and laboratory services, exam rooms, procedure rooms and general offices, marked a return visit from both Welman and Beyer.

Beyer Construction, in 1999, built an addition for the Glendale-based North Shore Surgical Center, which is a part of the Advanced Healthcare system. Welman Architects boasts of 30 years' experience in medical planning and helped design five of Advanced Healthcare's other area facilities.

Beyer's and Welman's experience were vital for the Mequon East Center because building a medical facility can be more challenging than other types of construction, said Tom Smith, Beyer project manager.

"Typically, there's a lot more detailed coordination of electronics and mechanics," he said.

That coordination carries throughout the design of the medical complex, with certain rooms requiring special power needs or specific-purpose outlets. The designers made accommodations for a mobile CT scan and a magnetic resonance imaging unit that will be available at the center a few days each week.

"We need to identify the types of equipment and where they'll be installed," Smith said.

Setting the stage for equipment installation required a close eye to detail, said Robert Wold, project architect with Welman. The self-contained MRI trailer required a tailor-made loading dock with a fully finished patient entrance.

"The dock had to be absolutely level," Wold said, because anything less would have rendered MRI readings useless.

Fast forward

Not only did Beyer and Welman need to focus on the project's finer details, but the companies also had to do it within the context of a fast-track delivery that brought the job to completion in eight months. Foundation and structural steel made up an early bid package, and the rest of the trade bids followed.

"We started to build the foundation and structural steel before it was completely designed," Smith said. That approach, he said, saved the project a couple of months.

The fast-track nature of the job also posed challenges for Welman, but the firm's past experience with similar projects helped, and the center's structural-steel phase went through without a hitch.

"It takes some strategy up front," Wold said.

This medical complex, however, differed from the other centers Welman worked on for Advanced Healthcare. Instead of creating a lobby at the entrance, Welman moved it to the center of the structure to help highlight the variety of disciplines within the building.

"They wanted to showcase cosmetics and the women's care area," Wold said.

Welman also used glass and a modern color scheme to give the center a more contemporary look so it would stand out from the more traditional buildings in the Port Washington Road area.

Eye to the future

Welman also had to take into consideration that Advanced plans to expand significantly in the near future. An adjoining 15,000-square-foot surgery center is scheduled for construction, and plans are in the works to add an entire second floor to the center.

Planning for the future, Welman designed the building to expand 44,000 square feet both horizontally and vertically. The structural steel in the original design is capable of supporting another floor, and the roof was put on with the idea that it would one day be the second story's floor.

Welman and Advanced Healthcare teams will continue their relationship with the surgery center because the architectural firm will handle project management on the upcoming surgery center.

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