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Northwestern Hospital Showcased

What do 230,000 square feet of glass, 10 million feet of electrical wiring, 23,000 electrical outlets, 40,000 light fixtures, 44 elevators, 18,000 tons of steel, 165 miles of pipe, enough concrete to build a sidewalk from Chicago to Minneapolis, enough floor space to hold 44 football fields and $580 million add up to? The new 2.2 million square-foot Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

In May of 1999, Northwestern Memorial opened its doors to Chicago and the world. Upon completion it was the largest privately funded construction project in Illinois and one of the largest medical constructions in the country.

The hospital complex is composed of two connected pavilions: The 17-story Feinberg Pavilion for inpatient care with 492 private rooms and 92 intensive care beds, and the 22-story Galter Pavilion for outpatient care and medical office space, connected by an 8-floor diagnostic and therapeutic center. Over half the capital for the project was raised through investing and cutting costs, and the new facility is touted as one of the most modern, technologically advanced medical complexes around. Architects for the new construction were Ellerbe Becket and Hellmuth Obata & Kassabaoum. And the Construction Management for the project was a joint venture between Power Contracting & Engineering Corp. and CRSS Constructors.

The early stages of planning for the new facility date back to 1987, when an administrative evaluation concluded a change was needed to maintain a "patients first" commitment. The following year, planning for the project began. 1994 marked the groundbreaking, 1996 marked the "topping-out" ceremony and May 1, 1999 patients moved in.

Continuing with the theme "Patients First", Northwestern Memorial offers a host of patient-oriented features, like pull-out beds for family members staying overnight, separate patient and public areas, a four-lane drive through drop off and 2,000-space attached parking garage, expanded Emergency Department facilities, bilingual signage and a Health Learning Center open to patients and the public offering information on health conditions, drug and treatment issues, alternative medicine and much more. Northwestern Memorial also features a number of clinical advances. It is a leader in the development and practice of minimally invasive surgery, offers one of the most comprehensive treatment programs for early detection and treatment of ovarian cancer, is a world leader in neuroscience and imaging and is pioneering new treatments in cardiology.

Built on the site of the hospital's old parking garage, this construction project was gigantic and a challenge. Due to its proximity to Lake Michigan, a retention wall had to be constructed. After the 100,000 sq.-ft. footprint was cleared, a 40-ft deep, 2-ft. thick slurry was installed. The next step was the 200 6-ft diameter, 8-15ft. wide caissons that had to be drilled 80 ft. into the ground. The finished foundation is capable of supporting 500 million lbs (40,000 elephants). Structural steel and concrete came next. They formed floor decks, elevator cores and the towers. Steel was difficult to come by due to Bethlehem Steel's closing of its Pennsylvania plant. That made jumbo-sized steel beams hard to get (the closest were in Luxembourg). As an alternative, a welded plate design was incorporated in which pieces were welded into square columns. In the fall of 1996 the building topped out and precast was erected. The final stage was the interior and the installation of mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems. This was said by some to be the most challenging aspect of the construction. Six separate contractors were brought in. the result is one of the most technically advanced hospitals in the world.

Northwestern Memorial Hospital has massive heating capacity delivered by five 600 HP Superior fire-tube run-off natural gas boilers. Each has a 20,700 lbs/hour steam capacity for a total of 103,000 lbs/hour. To serve the needs of the steam turbine chiller, the boilers run at 125 psi. all five units can run on natural gas or #2 oil. Fuel for regular use is stored in a 60-gallon A-tank. An additional 25,000 gallons is stored in another tank in reserve for the emergency generator.

Why such a massive heating capacity? A state-of-the-art medical facility has tremendous needs for heating for surgery, patient care and administrative areas. Also factored in is a remarkable amount of redundancy to ensure uninterrupted care in any conditions.

The Northwestern Memorial Hospital complex has an Evapco Cooling Tower. It features fiberglass blades, a stainless steel pan and delivers 7,000 tons of cooling. It is equipped with vibration switches for the motors, low-level oil detectors that send alarms to the facilities management system, and an oversized capacity of up to 12,000 tons. Technically the unit is two 3-cell towers working in tandem, one for the north side and one for the south. The north half of the tower is outfitted with basin heaters for winter operations. Its #1 fan also has a frequency drive for maintaining lower winter temperatures.

Four York Millennium Centrifugal Chillers work with the Evapco tower. The first chiller is a 1,000-ton, 480V winter unit. It uses 134A refrigerant. The next two chillers in line are 2,000-ton, 12,000V centrifugal chillers. And the 4th chiller is a 2,000-ton steam turbine unit. It has an Elliot steam turbine on top and uses 125 psi steam to turn the turbine at 4500 rpms. At full load it uses 24,000 lbs/hour.

The chilled water system connecting all this gear features a primary and a secondary loop. The primary loop circulates through the chillers. The secondary loop serves the coils for the air handlers, cools the linear accelerator, cools the ComEd vault, and provides cooling to the package units throughout the facility. The secondary loop also draws cooling off the primary loop as needed. Three 6,000 gpm Bell & Gossett frequency drive pumps serve the secondary loop and operate at 1,750 gpm for winter operations.

The extraordinary heating and cooling muscle of Northwestern Memorial Hospital is completely integrated and controlled by a Johnson Metasys facilities manage- ment system. This system is tied into all mechanical systems, the life safety system, the elevator system, security and the emergency power network. It covers 20,000 points. This provides the engineering staff with an extremely sophisticated tool to manage the operations of the complex. Operating in a user-friendly Windows computer environment, the system segments the complex by floors and then zooms in to mechanical equipment all the way down to the individual component level.

All mechanical equipment in Northwestern Memorial's complex is DDC controlled except for the heat exchanger valves and isolation dampers in the fans, and level controls in the boilers. Boiler level controls are pneumatic as a precaution against power failure to allow for easy manual control. As mentioned above, the Johnson Metasys system interfaces with all mechanical equipment throughout the complex. However, boilers and chillers are manually started and stopped by the engineering staff for additional quality control assurance.

An additional emergency power control Impac system is tied into the Johnson Metasys system. It monitors and tracks critical emergency power. This is vital to a state-of-the-art medical facility like Northwestern Memorial. Northwestern Memorial Hospital is setting a new, challenging standard to the medical community: The entire complex is HEPA (high efficiency particulate air filter) filtered. This is a unique new way to combat infection in a medical facility. By minimizing the amount of dust particles in the air, Northwestern Memorial has limited the transmission of contagious germs. An independent service was brought in to the facility to test the level of dust in the air and had difficulty finding a level! Northwestern Memorial has one of the lowest hospital-acquired infection rates in the world.

There are a wide variety of fans throughout the Northwestern Memorial complex ranging in size up to 120 HP. Dual feed air handlers come in to the main duct and feed 11 main supply fans. These are Joy Vane-Actuator fans. These are dual fans, so the actual number of fans is 22. The dual feed feature is nice because on non-extreme days, the engineers can do maintenance on 1/2 of the fans without interrupting service. These fans have 5 stages: An Intake Plenum with primary and secondary filters; a preheat Coil; a humidification section (each half of every dual fan has its own dry steam humidification); a chill water coil; and Hepa Filters (52 in each half of all eleven dual fans). The other main fans in use are the Atrium fans which serve the three atriums in the Galter and Fineberg Pavilions and the B-section that links them.

Five 2-meg Caterpillar generators supply electricity and emergency power to the Northwestern Memorial complex. Here again is an example of massive capacity in place to ensure uninterrupted service a all times in any conditions. Each of the five generators has a 550-gallon day tank that feeds off the 25,000-gallon main tank. These five generators are located in the first floor of the parking garage on site. They feature a parallel and switch gear system and can be started and stopped by the Johnson Metasys system. 85 ATS switches are used by these generators which also feature load optimization. In case of outage, they can run off of 2-3 generators based on the load required. Total capacity for all five generators is 10 million watts.

All wall barriers in Northwestern Memorial have fire stop that goes all the way up to the next floor. 4,000 smoke detectors are also spread throughout the complex, which is fully sprinklered.

Northwestern Memorial has gone to great lengths to provide efficient transportation between the hospital floors as well as privacy for patients. To facilitate this the elevators are separated into four categories: Patient Transport, Staff, Service and Public. These designations are strictly enforced and transportation is smooth. All elevators in the complex can be programmed from the Johnson Metasys system.

Going through the basic systems found in Northwestern Memorial's campus doesn't tell the whole story. In addition to boilers and chillers and air handlers are a variety of highly specialized equipment for use in medicine. A list of some of the major pieces includes a non-potable water system for sterilizers and a medical air system for patient rooms which includes a medical vacuum system, lab air and lab vacuum.

125 psi steam comes into mechanical rooms and is converted to 15 psi. Condensate from machinery is sent to a receiver which then sends the condensate to a de-aerator. Heat exchangers then take the 15 psi steam and heat a closed loop system which sends steam through the building reheat boxes and radiant heat panels in rooms. VAV reheats are controlled by Titus boxes with Johnson Metasys controls. Reco instantaneous "on demand" water heaters also take the 15 psi steam to heat incoming city water and provide domestic hot water to patient rooms as well as the rest of the hospital. They feature a recirculation line for unused water. A liquid disinfector system is used on the return lines of the domestic hot water system. It uses copper and silver ions (positive and negative charges) to kill Legionella and other bacteria.

Part of Northwestern Memorial's success in minimizing hospital infections is no doubt due to the fact that every patient room has its own sink to combat the spread of bacteria. Another nice feature is the presence of oxygen, vacuum and medical air on both sides of every bed. This allows any bed to immediately be converted to an Intensive Care Unit. The beds in the complex also incorporate new technology, positioning and adjusting by sensor according to body type.

Northwestern Memorial features 60 isolation rooms throughout the complex with three in each unit. Every isolation room is equipped with an Iso-Tek monitor mounted outside. This sophisticated device monitors the positive/negative ratio, and sets off alarms if the room's status changes. Positive rooms are for transplants and other procedures that require germs to be kept out. Negative rooms are for TB patients and others who have contagious diseases requiring germs to be kept in. The mechanical equipment in the complex makes it possible to switch a room from positive to negative or vice versa in a mere 5 minutes. A room is kept positive by keeping building supply and exhaust at 1/2. A room is kept negative by drawing air out using 2 dedicated isolation room exhausts located on the 17th floor.

Forty-two engineers operate and maintain the mechanical systems throughout the Northwestern Memorial complex. They are overseen by Director of Facilities Bud Vance. Reporting to Mr. Vance is Manager of Quality Control Bruce Morse. Seven facilities managers report to Mr. Morse. In charge of maintenance are Managers Mike Alexa, David Stout, Don Mason and Patricia McEwen; in charge of engineers and the power plant are Managers Larry Waranoski and Ross Feldman; and in charge of the Streeterville facility and the electrical staff is Manager David Kim.

Larry Feldman(left) and Ross Stout (right) earn our thanks for showing us around and explaining how things work.

These managers oversee the service engineers, who operate and maintain the mechanical equipment throughout the building and in the 9 mechanical rooms. In our interview we talked with a number of managers and engineers. It was obvious that they took great pride in operating and maintaining such an expansive and advanced facility. Our thanks to David Stout and Ross Feldman for showing us around, and to all the others on the Northwestern Memorial staff who took the time to answer our questions.

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