UCLA Health’s new, 170,000-square-foot, five-story neuropsychiatric hospital will help address the critical shortage of inpatient mental health services in greater Los Angeles, California.
Set to open in 2026, the facility will include 119 beds for inpatient care, a 20-bed outpatient unit to diagnose and stabilize patients in an acute behavioral health crisis, plus group and individual therapy rooms. The new building will also house administrative offices and areas for supportive services, including food service, imaging, a pharmacy, and diagnostic labs. Plans also call for the inclusion of a rooftop terrace, ground-level gardens, and a dedicated serenity room where staff and clinicians can decompress and support their peers.
UCLA Health plans to relocate and expand its existing inpatient psychiatric treatment services — UCLA Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, currently housed within Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood — to the new facility. Once complete, the new neuropsychiatric hospital will be equipped to provide behavioral health care services for both pediatric and adult patients.
The new hospital is currently under construction in Los Angeles’ Mid-Wilshire neighborhood on the site of four hospital buildings that had formed the Olympia Medical Center, which closed in 2021. Once complete, the new site will increase UCLA’s current inpatient psychiatric treatment capacity by more than 60 percent.
HOK is the project’s architect, and McCarthy Building Companies is the project’s design-builder. Construction on the progressive design-build project began in 2023, with completion expected by the end of this year.
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The new facility sits on the site of a community hospital complex acquired by UCLA Health in 2021. The project required detailed planning to determine how to most effectively retrofit portions of the existing complex, while demolishing others.
“We went through roughly a year-long design process, following HOK and McCarthy’s selection as the design-build team in 2022,” said Stuart Jackson, a Project Director at McCarthy. “We worked hand in hand with UCLA Health and our trade partners to make sure we maintained transparency and collaboration throughout the entire design process.”
The existing structure actually represented four separate, adjoining buildings that had been constructed over several decades.
“Due to the buildings’ age, this project required a significant amount of structural retrofit,” Jackson said. “A good portion of our work in 2023, in fact, was spent retrofitting and strengthening the structure to meet current [code] requirements.”
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Construction on the new facility also required careful coordination to avoid disrupting other businesses and sites in the area, including a nearby school. The design-build team worked closely with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation to ensure traffic flow in the area remained unimpeded throughout the build.
Another challenge to the retrofit process emerged from the building’s interior. Specifically, the deck-to-deck heights between floors in the existing buildings averaged only about 10 feet — significantly less than what would be typical of a newly built facility, Jackson said.
As a result, crews were left with only 18 to 24 inches in the overhead ceiling space to fit the new hospital’s upgraded utilities. Jackson said the limited space meant that “BIM coordination and modeling was critical. We modeled everything down to fractions of an inch.”
The spacing constrictions also meant there was no room to install centralized shafts for a traditional HVAC distribution system in the new hospital. Instead, McCarthy and HOK worked together to design a unique system of perimeter shafts — located on the exterior of the building — to deliver heated and cooled air throughout the new facility.
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Early in the build process, McCarthy teams demolished one existing structure entirely. Once the remaining buildings were primed for refurbishment, crews created the new hospital’s exterior using prefabricated panels prepared off site by Nevell Group Inc., a California-based manufacturer.
“Because the panels were delivered ready to install — fully assembled, complete with fiber-cement finishes, insulation, and framing — the exterior came together quickly,” Jackson said.
“[Since] we were working with a pre-existing building structure for this project, we needed a means to start the exterior skin faster,” he added. “Using a prefab approach with the panelized system allowed us to dry in the building faster and enclose the building quickly, so we could proceed with the interior build-out.”
Suzanne Kiely, Project Manager with UCLA Health planning, design, and construction, called the panels “a game changer” in a UCLA Health news release.
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“Building the panels in a controlled factory environment eliminates the risk of delay due to weather,” Kiely said. “Plus, we shortened the overall schedule because panels are made off site, while the base structure is prepared at the site. Work happens concurrently rather than consecutively.”
HOK and McCarthy designed each panel individually to fit the built dimensions of the existing hospital structures. The panels then arrived on a precisely set schedule, ready to be craned one-by-one into place.
“We were able to get several panels in a day, really reducing the amount of time it took to get the exterior closure complete,” Jackson said. “So, it was a significant schedule savings for the project.”
Because of their high thermal efficiency, the hospital’s exterior panels support UCLA Health’s sustainability goals for the new project, which include several strategic steps to reduce the facility’s overall heating and cooling costs. It is planned as an all-electric hospital.
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In addition to incorporating high-efficiency heating and cooling systems in the new hospital design, McCarthy teams also installed low-flow plumbing and low-carbon, renewable building materials throughout the build. Eventually, the hospital hopes to pursue a LEED Gold certification for the new facility.
Along with employing ready-made exterior panels, McCarthy further streamlined the build process by self-performing concrete and drywall installations on the project. In all, McCarthy crews poured more than 5,800 cubic yards of concrete on site.
McCarthy also utilized McCarthy EQUIP, its own internal team, to coordinate with the UCLA procurement team and integrate owner-furnished and contractor-installed items into the design. This approach allowed the McCarthy and HOK teams to stay abreast of any potential shifts in equipment sizing specifications, enabling them to incorporate those changes into their design-build plans in real time.
In another cost- and time-saving maneuver, McCarthy teams utilized laser scanning technology to scan the pre-existing hospital complex buildings as part of their pre-design phase. They then transferred the scanned data into their BIM model to “accurately reflect the existing built conditions, so we could design around the constraints of the building,” Jackson said.
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The scans were organized by area and made accessible to the entire design-build team to ensure that all stakeholders could reference the latest site conditions for their upcoming work. McCarthy and HOK held BIM coordination meetings regularly to review scan data, address discrepancies, and update models as needed.
Teams also adopted ground-penetrating radar to map out the location of existing utilities below grade, in an effort to limit utility disruption during the retrofit process.
Additionally, as part of the interior finishing process, McCarthy is employing Dusty Robotics robots to digitally print construction layouts directly onto the new hospital's job site floors.
“The robot is similar in size and appearance to a robot vacuum, but you deploy it on the floor, and it utilizes information from your BIM to print snap lines for the interior walls and other interior finish details,” Jackson said. “It’s a very efficient means of getting through the layout process.”
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The UCLA neuropsychiatric hospital represents McCarthy’s largest-scale use of Dusty Robotics technology to date.
As of February 2026, the new hospital’s exterior is fully enclosed, and McCarthy teams are at work on the final stages of interior finishes.
“This project has required an exceptional amount of coordination, so seeing it come together has been extremely rewarding,” Jackson said.
- Owner: UCLA Health, Los Angeles, California
- General Contractor: McCarthy Building Companies, St. Louis, Missouri
- Architect: HOK, New York, New York
- Other Contractors: Nevell Group Inc. (prefabricated exterior wall systems), Pan Pacific Mechanical (plumbing/mechanical), Helix (electrical), Streamline Fire Protection (fire protection), BAPKO Metal Inc. (structural steel/miscellaneous steel) Photos courtesy of McCarthy Building Companies. Rendering courtesy of HOK.
