A federal judge in Florida has ordered HKS Architects to pay Orlando Health $3.3 million in damages for failing to include proper rebar in a key concrete slab and other design flaws that added to the cost of a new hospital that opened last year in Lake Mary, Florida.
HKS has a lawsuit pending against BBM Structural Engineers, the Orlando-based firm it hired, blaming that firm for the alleged errors.
In a 48-page decision issued Sept. 30 after a four-day nonjury trial in March, Judge John Antoon II ruled that flawed plans were to blame and not mistakes by the project’s construction manager, Brasfield & Gorrie.
ENR’s calls and emails seeking comment from HKS, one of the top U.S. architectural practices, and Dallas-based BBM were not immediately returned.
Orlando Health had hired HKS in 2019 to design the six-story, 150-bed hospital. As the project progressed and additional services were needed, the architect’s fee in 2022 was about $13.7 million.
The hospital sued HKS in 2024, claiming its designs for a tower carpet and other sections were defective. HKS in turn sued BBM.
The two cases were separated for trial purposes, and a mediation of the hospital’s lawsuit against HKS reached an impasse last year.
The first structural design problem, a lack of sufficient top rebar in part of a 12-inch-deep second floor concrete slab, was discovered in 2022. The following year, problems were found with an overhanging area in one of the towers, as well as floor slab deflections and undersized beams in sections of another tower.
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Antoon’s decision reconstructs the events in detail. Brasfield & Gorrie had just placed concrete for a floor slab and upon removing the forms and edges noticed cracks at the bottom and top. A BBM director and a key Brasfield & Gorrie manager disagreed in the following days over whether the premature removal of the forms was to blame or poor design.
In a key section of the judge’s decision, he described what he interpreted as BBM’s principal changing his position on whether his company or Brasfield & Gorrie was at fault — first denying fault, then accepting it, then denying it as the legal and financial dimensions of the mistake became clearer.
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“Upon discovering that the top rebar was missing,” Judge Antoon stated, the BBM director “immediately confessed to an error” only to later reverse his position.
After the team members met and after Orlando Health had hired Walter P Moore & Associates as a consultant, the project team blasted several inches off the top of the slab to allow rebar to be added and the top of the slab was poured again.
The remediation plan and work were carried out collaboratively, Antoon wrote, but a short time later BBM began to abdicate responsibility, in Judge Altoon’s opinion, because it was “requested by HKS.”
