Emergency Department - Ellis Medicine
Emergency Department Modernization
Addition, Renovations, & New Parking Structure
Ellis Medicine
Schenectady, NY
The Emergency Department at the Ellis Hospital campus was under study for expansion and reconstruction due to mounting volume pressure and aging, limited facilities. The merging of annual visits from the former St. Clare’s Hospital would be a doubling of emergency demands on the campus, but eliminated redundancy and uncertainty for the service population.
Ongoing Emergency Department planning was shifted to study system-wide master facility planning implications and embed flexibility into every level of project consideration. The result was a thorough exploration of alternative approaches that assured leadership and staff that the course of the project was optimal and maximized their facility’s flexibility to address future challenges as they arise. Elements of flexibility include:
- Redesign of operational flow as part of the design process
- Focus on “treating the right patient in the right place by the right person”
- Infrastructure design to accommodate significant vertical expansion to both hospital and new, adjacent parking facility
- 35,000sf of shell space above and 10,000sf below
- Emergency Department floor plan that flexes to meet census changes whether by shift or incident (eg. seasonal census shifts and disaster accommodations)
- Flexible IT infrastructure to accommodate evolving technology and operational requirements
- Open support areas to optimize visibility for added security and changing operational and procedural requirements
The plan provides for a facility to support 100,000 annual visits. The expansion provides 35,000 sf of new area under phase 1, with a 10,000 sf reconstruction of the existing ED under phase 2, conforming it to the programming and space plan of the new approach.
Emphasis on the importance of detailed cost estimating, scheduling and logistical planning, from project commencement, further positioned the team to respond quickly and effectively to changing requirements during design and construction. The Guaranteed Maximum Price was ½% below the Concept design estimate due to thorough documents, regular team meetings and careful control of design development with continuous parallel estimating throughout the design phases. These controls resulted in the development of effective contingencies in the project budget that enabled the Hospital to respond in a controlled and effective manner to changing requirements during the construction phase related to on-site parking demand, operational procedures and technology, without compromising the project design.
Please also see the new parking facility portion of this project here.
Photographed by Liz Lajeunesse Photography