Construction of the Phoenix Children’s Hospital NICU
phoenix
BEST PROJECT
Sent by: Kitchell
Owner: Phoenix Children’s Hospital
Main design/structure company: HKS
General contractor: Kitchell
MEP Engineer: WSP
Interior Designer: Dalton Interiors
Subcontractors: Lanmore Services Inc.; NKW Inc.; Pueblo Mechanical & Controls LLC; Sunstate Installations Inc.; The Hiller Cos.; TP Acoustics Inc.; Western Milling; Wholesale Flats LLC
A 44,000-square-foot expansion brought 48 private rooms to the 11th floor of Phoenix Children’s patient tower as part of its new neonatal intensive care unit. This facility remains the only Level IV NICU facility designated by the American Academy of Pediatrics in Arizona as providing the highest level of medical care for complex neonatal conditions.
Each room is equipped for emergency and advanced treatments, while an efficient floor plan gives doctors quick access to patients and allows for easy transport to other areas.
Since the $18.4 million project was located directly below the 12th-floor helipad, the project team conducted enhanced acoustic testing within the existing shell space to determine how to mitigate traffic noise from ’emergency helicopters.
Heavy-duty channels were incorporated into corridor walls and between patient rooms, while mass-load isolation for mechanical systems and other strategic measures exceeded code requirements.
Photo by Kyle Zirkus
Halfway through construction, the owner decided to change the scope of the project from 48 private medical-surgical patient rooms to 48 NICU patient rooms. Although the original design had already been approved by city inspectors and the interior structure was underway, the team moved to create a new NICU care area with patient room shifts, modifications to the guard sleeping room and a completely different interior design palette.
The contractor coordinated closely with the design team and owner to identify areas of work that could continue pending design changes. Once the new drawings were released, the contractor meticulously reviewed them with the design team and owner to minimize excessive RFIs and prioritized the resubmission process to keep the project on schedule.
To minimize the project’s impacts on active hospital operations, the team used a small staff elevator manned by a Kitchell staff member during site hours. The hospital also allocated a large elevator for the movement of material during the early hours of the morning. To ensure a quiet environment for patients on the lower floors, noisy activities were limited until after 8:30 am.
Photo by Kyle Zirkus
In active healthcare spaces, Kitchell takes a patient-first approach, ensuring that every preconstruction and construction decision prioritizes patient safety. Given the construction’s location in an active children’s hospital, ensuring the safety of workers, patients and staff was paramount. Project team members followed infection control risk assessment protocols and planned infection control procedures for each phase, approved by Phoenix Children’s staff for comprehensive safety planning and logistics
The NICU fire alarm system is code compliant and tailored to the needs of your sensitive patients. In collaboration with the fire alarm contractor and the city, Kitchell obtained a variance to reduce the audiovisual elements of the fire alarm, minimizing the impact of loud sounds and flashing lights.
Despite these changes and challenges, the project was completed on budget and on schedule in February 2024.
