Rady Children’s Hospital
Rady Children’s Hospital is the first acute care facility to meet LEED Certification and OSHPD requirements. This 279,000 square-foot project brought A.O. Reed on board as the mechanical contractor responsible for the plumbing and HVAC. The client needed to expand the hospital due to a growing need for a surgical center, NICU, and cancer center.
OSHPD is requirements to be met when constructing acute care facilities, psychiatric hospitals, multi-story skilled nursing homes, and care facilities. The state of California requires OSHPD for these facilities to withstand an earthquake and provide medical care in case individuals get hurt during the catastrophe. Our team worked hand-in-hand with the OSPHD inspectors and general contractor. Through extensive pre-construction coordination with our BIM team, we coordinated a constructible set of plans before breaking ground. Our dedicated BIM team was one of the reasons this project was successful.
The hospital has a surgical center, 84 surgical beds, a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and a cancer center. We also constructed 16 operating rooms for each department, a 28-bed hematology and oncology unit, and a 10-bed bone marrow transplant intensive care unit.
The project's mechanical and plumbing scope included installing exhaust fans, fan coils, humidifiers, chillers, cooling towers, and rooftop air handling units. In the upgraded central plant, our team installed chillers, towers, steam boilers, and heating hot water boilers. We installed an underground high temperature heating hot water system. Other underground work included the installation of an oxygen piping system that fed from the central plant to the new acute care facility. An underground diesel fuel tank with above grade piping was installed to serve the emergency generators, medical vacuum, oxygen, nitrogen, argon, and breathing air systems.
A.O. Reed worked with the client, project team, and general contractor to achieve LEED Certification. The project installed occupancy sensors in the operating rooms to reduce the ventilation rate by 60% when unoccupied. This saved 45% of annual energy savings. We also included variable frequency drives on air handling unit motors. This adjusted the fan speed to align with filter loading. Our team also included carbon dioxide monitoring for areas with high occupancy. This reduced ventilation rates to align with the number of people in the room. We installed a supply air reset strategy that adjusts air temperatures. The construction of a 24,000 square-foot cogeneration plant provides the campus with heating and high temperature water. This contains two 700-ton natural gas chillers. Our team showed off our vast experience and gave constructability feedback when necessary.
The project was completed weeks ahead of schedule, with a completion date of October 10th, 2010. We are proud to be part of this project for many reasons. Many A.O. Reed employees have families, so constructing a facility that would aid the care of children throughout the state is very humbling. We are extremely proud to be a part of a project that is the state’s largest children’s hospital with a LEED certification and meets all OSHPD’s requirements.