University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics Rooftop Heliport Facility

On the Fly

Findorff meets its heliport deadline

By Janine Anderson

Emergency situations require quick decisions and no mistakes.

That’s how personnel at the University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics react every time a patient arrives on a helicopter. That’s how J.H. Findorff & Son reacted as the deadline approached for a new helicopter landing pad on top of the Madison facility.

And when UW Hospital held its grand opening for the new facility, Findorff made sure there was a completed project to celebrate.

“This was a big, marquis project,” said Mark Premo, Findorff’s project manager. “There was a lot of pressure to get that done on time. It was really exciting and a different type of project. I don’t think you’ll find a heliport like this in the state.”

The complicated project gave the hospital the necessary roof space to land two helicopters and the facilities needed to fuel and maintain them. UW Hospital needed the project so it could operate its rescue-helicopter service more efficiently.

Instead of taking helicopters somewhere else for fueling and maintenance, the hospital can now perform that work on-site, cutting down the time it takes to get patients transported to and from the hospital in emergency situations.

But building the landing pad wasn’t easy.

“This is a vertical expansion, and it was directly in the middle of the hospital,” Premo said. “You couldn’t have picked a more difficult location to get to.

“This was where it made the most sense for it to be. It had the most open sight lines as far as a pilot coming in. But as far as the building, it made it very difficult to get there.”

Findorff started by chipping through the existing roof to get to the steel supports. The seven-floor hospital has 18-foot floors, putting the project team the equivalent of about 10 stories up.


	Project Name: University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics Rooftop Heliport Facility Location: Madison Submitting Company: J.H. Findorff & Son Inc., Madison Construction Manager: J.H. Findorff & Son Inc. Architect: HGA Architects and Engineers Inc., Milwaukee Engineer: HGA Architects and Engineers Inc. Owner: University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics Authority, Madison Project Cost: $8.9 million Project Size: 46,000 square feet Start Date: February 2005 Completion Date: November 2005

On top of that, the hospital stayed open throughout the process.

“The floor below us was patient rooms,” Premo said. “They had existing services that had to remain in place until the new mechanicals were available to change them out. There had to be careful coordination between mechanical, electrical and ourselves in how we built this.

“We had 16 of these shutdowns that affected critical-care areas. It had to run very smoothly. We had to have it go like clockwork.”

Simply getting materials to the site was a challenge, he said. Findorff put a tower crane on top of an empty elevator shaft, and all materials came up through that crane. It was the only way to get to the roof.

“There was no lay-down area around the hospital,” Premo said. “We brought material in right next to the emergency room. The emergency entrance is barely two lanes.

“We had to be in complete contact with dispatch downstairs so if there was an ambulance coming in, we had to clear the way. That takes precedence over getting material on the site.”

While the new landing pads were being built, the hospital was still using its existing helicopter facility. So each time a helicopter arrived, the tower crane moved out of the way.

“Every time it came in, we’d have to turn a certain way so it wouldn’t impede where they were landing,” Premo said.

The challenges the site presented made the work difficult, but Findorff came through and completed the project just in time.

“We cut it close,” Premo said. “We got our occupancy, and just the day before we were ready to go, we had our final walk-through by the state. We had a nice grand opening.”