VIDEO:SSM SLU Hospital Modules Show Pathway to Productivity
Date Posted: November 12, 2018
Posted In: Ideas, Organizations, Projects, Workforce,
by Tom Finan, Executive Director, Construction Forum STL
Technological innovation and collaboration usually appeal to those in the construction industry as much as peas and carrots do to two-year-olds. They might be good for us, but it doesn’t mean we’re eating them. But that situation is changing. In the process, approaches are being used that have been tried in the past, along with some new tweaks.
A construction team working out of a warehouse/factory building at Kingshighway and Natural Bridge will crank out close to 300 hospital bathrooms by January for the new SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital project hospital by January. Alberici, the program manager, is applying the same LEAN collaborative approach it took in 2009 on the SSM St. Clare project.
ConstructForSTL recently toured the former steel fabrication facility where modules are being fabricated as a guest of T.J. Wies. The wall system contractor is collaborating on the modules with mechanical contractor Corrigan Co. Dean Lakey, Wies’ director of business development, observed that hotel and hospital owners appreciate the positive impact that modularization has on scheduled completion dates because the streamlined process moves up the start of returns on the owner’s investment. “It’s all about heads in beds,” Lakey said.
Wies General Foreman Ty Whitman, a 17-year-veteran, said that while the modularization has its own issues, he finds that in terms of safety and productivity the modular process outshines on-site construction. He recalled that on BJC Healthcare’s Memorial Hospital project in Shiloh, IL he would barely get a load of material set down before he had to move it because it was in another trade’s way. The modularization, Lakey and Whitman said, avoids conflicts with other trades.
While the construction process in the North Kingshighway warehouse is not automated, it very much embraces manufacturing techniques. A jig that is used to frame a floor plate can also be used to make ceiling plates. Copper pipe can be bench-soldered into ready-to-install components.
With 16 completed bathrooms moving out of the facility in a week, one of the biggest challenges is balancing the supply chain — e.g., getting enough units ready for plumbing and electrical, buttoning up the units that have been wired and plumbed, and/or storing units when on-site conditions do not allow them to be lifted into place and connected as planned.
Everything Old Is New
In its 2017 report “Reinventing Construction Through a Productivity Revolution,” the international consulting firm McKinsey stated, “Change may not be a distant prospect—there are signs of potential disruption in parts of the global construction industry. The diagnostic is well known. Best practices already exist. The potential of a mass-production system offers the chance of a dramatic step change in productivity in some segments of the industry higher productivity.”
It isn’t that the St. Louis region hasn’t tried modular construction as a productivity improver in the past. But the timing is now right. Over the years St. Louis has been an early adopter a number of modular technologies. Tilt-up concrete panel construction (Bannes-Shaugnessy, now BSI), masonry panels (Masonry Systems of Missouri), and modular interior wall systems all were introduced by advocates and innovators here in the 1970s. The problem was that nothing stuck.
Ron Wiese, Alberici’s vice president for estimating, said that Alberici first started employing modularization on hospital bathroom units in the 1980s at SLU’s Firmin Desloge Hospital and the former Deaconess Hospital (the empty field set aside for St. Louis Zoo expansion at Hampton and Oakland).
Modular systems, built off-site are now gaining currency. A 2016 report, “Shaping the Future of Construction: A Breakthrough in Mindset and Technology” from the World Economic Forum stated:
“Productivity in construction could receive a substantial boost from standardization, modularization and prefabrication. The standardization of components brings many benefits, including a reduction in construction costs, fewer interface and tolerance problems, greater certainty over outcomes, reduced maintenance costs for end-users, and more scope for recycling. Modularization adds to the advantages of standardization, by increasing the possibilities for customization and flexibility, and helping to realize the potential of prefabrication in a factory-like environment. Prefabrication would increase construction efficiency, enable better sequencing in the construction process and reduce weather-related holdups; by such means, it becomes possible to reduce a project’s delivery times and construction costs relative to traditional construction methods, and also to create safer working environments.”
Recently in the St. Louis region, prefabricated panels have speeded construction through all kinds of weather. For example, Holland Construction used off-site-fabricated wooden structural panels in building the Encore, a five-story apartment building which opened this year on the former St. Louis Arena site on Oakland near Hampton. Modularization of mechanical components using computerized design and advanced manufacturing techniques is almost table stakes on large projects today. The mechanical penthouse equipment on the new Parkview Tower at Barnes-Jewish Hospital was fabricated by icon Mechanical at its Granite City facilities and craned into place in 14 modules.
Getting on the Panel
Wies’ Dean Lakey said that T.J. Wies is in the process of becoming a supplier of Sto Panel Technology. Sto — a major force in the Exterior Insulation Finishing System (EIFS) space since the 1970s — has developed a series of lightweight panels which the company says are code-compliant, systematized, standardized and backed by Sto’s warranty. The company website states. that the panels can be used with a variety of materials, including brick, steel, and precast in addition to Sto’s line of finish materials.