When Olsson joined the team expanding Baylor Scott & White’s health-care facilities in Pflugerville, Texas, we knew all about our client’s reputation for excellence.

The hospital system’s consistently high performance in patient outcomes, safety, and specialty care have helped it rank second nationally among large health providers, according to Premier Inc., a healthcare improvement alliance. The facilities in Pflugerville – a city of 65,000 about 20 miles northeast of Austin – are among Baylor Scott & White’s network of more than50 hospitals and hundreds of healthcare clinics providing more than 13 million patient encounters each year.

"We are proud to have played a key role in this essential project." 

Drawing on our experience and expertise in the health care market, we helped deliver a multi-phase project that met the hospital’s high standards. The project featured the following:

• Construction of a new 75,000-square-foot, three-story medical office building on the hospital’s campus to serve as the Baylor Scott & White Clinic – Pflugerville.

• Addition of 40,000 square feet to the existing hospital, consisting of a new top floor and expansion of the emergency department and other treatment spaces

“Baylor Scott & White is responding to growth in the City of Pflugerville by investing in one of the most important things to any community,” said AJ Toops, senior engineer who managed both projects for Olsson. “We are proud to have played a key role in this essential project.”

Other Olsson employees with leading roles included Caleb Gentry, lead mechanical engineer; Sara Habdas, lead electrical engineer; Emily Deeker, landscape architect; Wyatt Popp, site civil design leader; and Chris Davis, client relationship manager.

Hospital expansion

The hospital expansion involved design and construction of a new fourth floor, which added 24 new patient rooms. The project also added seven new exam rooms, a triage room, and a nurse’s station to the emergency department. New square footage created space for two new interventional radiology/catheter laboratories, preoperative care rooms, and the post-anesthesia care unit. Finally, the project expanded space for the sterile processing department and two future operating rooms.

All work was completed while the hospital remained open and serving patients.

"It's not a one-size-fits-all solution. It's about always communicating and coordinating to make sure the system is going to work for you." 

Services we provided for the hospital expansion included the following:

• Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP)design, which featured adding a third chiller to serve the new square footage in the hospital.
• Below-slab plumbing for the new fourth floor through the ceiling of the third floor. This was achieved with staged installation to minimize disruption to third-floor patient rooms.
• Distribution system for delivery of bulk oxygen and other medical gases, and removal of waste medical vapors.
• New air handlers for the patient tower, which Toops said involved “very complex coordination” to test the system to meet hospital code requirements before construction was completed. The new handlers serve the new patient floor, the existing patient floors, and other departments in the hospital.
• New air handlers to serve the added surgical and emergency department spaces.
• Branch-level electrical power to serve the new floor and new imaging, operating, and sterile processing areas, and the pre-op and post-anesthesia care units.
• A temporary docking station to the emergency generator system serving the campus.

Clinic and medical office building

The second major project phase involved greenfield construction of the 75,000-square-foot, three-story medical office building. Our work on this phase included the following:

• The full electrical distribution from the ground up, including lighting and fire alarm.
• An automatic transfer switch (allows switching from utility to generator power) so the building could be connected to the campus’s emergency generator system.
• Load calculations for the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems to meet the client’s standards and specifications.
• Full design and layout of domestic hot water, cold water, and sanitary systems.
• Civil engineering for the site and parking lot, which included lighting.
• Close coordination between our Landscape Architecture team and the client to achieve aesthetic goals for the site.

Delivering value to our client

Over the course of two years, we helped our client meet the complex codes and regulations that govern health care facilities. And we made frequent site visits, which allowed us to better respond to questions, concerns, and unforeseen challenges.

Our responsiveness included design of control sequences for the MEP systems, so Baylor Scott & White’s operations staff was comfortable and confident operating the systems. We also closely coordinated with manufacturers, so the controls equipment met the needs of the project as designed.

“It’s not a one-size fits all solution,” Caleb Gentry said. “It’s about always communicating and coordinating to make sure the system is going to work for you. Those are the kinds of intangibles and the value webring to our health-care partners.”

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