Broaddus & Associates was retained as program manager by Texas Children’s Hospital for a 1.27 million SF maternity and pediatrics center at the Texas Medical Center in Houston.  Broaddus & Associates is responsible for overseeing the project from design through completion, ensuring that it achieves the client’s quality, budget and schedule objectives.  The new facility will allow the internationally-renowned Texas Children’s Hospital to offer obstetric care in addition to its fetal and newborn programs.

In order to create space for the new project, the existing Crowne Plaza Hotel and Wells Fargo buildings required demolition by implosion and site clearing.  Machine demolition was performed on half of the project, and the Crowne Plaza was imploded without impacting patient care in immediately adjacent facilities.  This process required extensive coordination with neighboring institutions in the Texas Medical Center, the City of Houston, Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, the Houston Zoo, and the Houston Police Department.  The implosion was successfully executed exactly as planned.

During excavation, damage to an adjacent building was discovered.  Broaddus & Associates managed the coordination and transfer of information between owners to ensure the engineer and contractor could provide the neighbor with an acceptable plan of action and protect Texas Children’s Hospital from any risk.  Extensive planning and coordination were necessary, as the project was built with the intent of expansion in the near future.  A major challenge was determining how to locate and reposition tower cranes to construct the pediatric tower without impacting vehicle or pedestrian traffic. 

Offsite contractor staging and site access was also a challenge, requiring city approval of a permanent roadway revision.  While the project was phased to be fast-tracked, the owner was provided with opportunities for cost savings.  The team took action to improve the current completion and allow early occupancy possibilities for areas preferred by the owner to assist in the startup of their first-ever maternity center.

The design team, led by FKP Architects, and major subcontractors utilized Building Information Modeling (BIM).  As a result, design errors, construction and trade conflicts, delays and cost impacts were all minimized.  Broaddus & Associates extended the construction manager-at-risk delivery by using multiple Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) submissions (foundation, core/shell and build-out) to fast-track the construction and minimize scope erosion through price escalation.