The challenges of the $650 million Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) expansion would have given the best of project teams pause.
The site in the heart of the Portland campus is almost impossibly tight, requiring the new Vista Pavilion to be "shoehorned" in place; the busy city setting called for the utmost precision and to-the-minute planning.
"The building is 14 inches away from an existing parking structure," said Jim Aarhus, senior superintendent of Skanska. "It's right up against an existing roadway on the upper campus and right up against a roadway on the lower campus. We have no space whatsoever."
One of the early decisions in coping with the considerable challenges was to cut into an adjacent hillside to shift the road over and create enough space to get trucks in and materials unloaded, then the trucks turned around and back down the hill. It also allowed Skanska crews to move the regular traffic and pedestrians away from the work site.
"Another challenge is the crew," Aarhus said. "We had at one time over 450 craft workers on site. They all parked down on a gravel lot on the waterfront, and we shuttled them up in the morning and back down in the afternoon. On a different lot down on the south waterfront, we'd bring a lot of materials there and stage them on trailers and bring them up as needed.
"We had all of our materials delivered two to three weeks in advance, so we always had what we needed. We did that with the entire structural steel package, which came out of Spokane and southern Oregon, and with our glass, which came out of Texas. We have a great logistics team."
The 500,000-sq.-ft. V-shaped tower required the work of two 542 Liebherr luffing cranes. At the start of the project, the climbing cranes were erected at full standing height, then, as the building grew taller, the cranes "self-climbed," each "jumping" twice, Aarhus said.
The 14-story Vista Pavilion includes three skybridges, which were built over elevated roadways. That also turned out to be a bit of a challenge.
"Prior to bringing in heavy equipment, we had to scan the roadway and found there were some hollow spots and some existing fuel tanks up there in and around loading dock," Aarhus said. "In a few cases, we drilled and constructed micropile foundations just for equipment to come up and sit to drill for the bridges because they were so heavy. It all worked out really well. The heaviest were in the 40,000- to 50,000-pound range."
Because the project, which is designed to achieve LEED Silver certification, is a health-care facility for cancer patients, it required particular care in keeping the site as pristine as possible, said Ryan Richards, project executive.
"You're definitely wanting to do a really thorough job, making sure things are clean and tidy, making sure there are no contaminants left out when construction is complete," he said. "Quality control is heightened, and cleanliness is of the utmost importance. The other thing is having a really good collaboration with the design team. This project was pretty innovative in how we assembled early on.
"We had a [collaborative] type of environment where we all sat in the same office — the owner, architect, all the consultants, as well as the trade partners, which I think was critical to really making this project a success as far as pre planning and making sure that we get milestones and got critical products and materials."
The project, which will include 128 beds for cancer patients, is set for completion at the end of 2025, with the first patients scheduled to be admitted in April 2026.
Despite having to pause the planning and designing of the project due to COVID, the construction has gone as planned — on time and smoothly, said Mark Engleking, vice president and account manager.
"This isn't an everyday project," Engleking said. "This is a one-of-a-kind project. The way OHSU set this up and their collaborative culture ... we spent several months together in a room trying to plan this out. Between us, OHSU, the design team, NBBJ architects, we did a good job coming up with plans.
"Things came up, but they were never a big deal because everybody just had that mindset of what's best for this project, and everybody worked together. That to me, in a job with this complexity and length, is just impressive to see in action ... a shining example of the collaborative effort that the entire project team put together." CEG
