GILBERT, AZ — McCarthy Building Companies recently marked the topping out of the $243-million, 310,000-square-foot Banner Gateway Medical Center Tower expansion project, which is located in Gilbert, Arizona. The expansion essentially doubles the size of the medical center campus, addressing growing needs for women’s services and cancer care by bringing an additional patient tower, an expanded diagnostics and treatment area, and more parking.

The topping out signifies the placement of the last beam atop the new five-story patient tower. The tower, which is the second on the campus, is a 198,000-square-foot addition that will initially bring 109 new patient beds to the facility. It will also allow for increased capacity of patient beds by an additional 190 total beds once the shelled space is built out to serve the rapidly growing East Valley. The project also includes a three-level, 112,000-square-foot expansion to the Diagnostics and Treatment building, including an expansion of the Emergency, Surgery, Imaging, Cardiopulmonary, and Endoscopy departments.

“Our commitment to serving the health care needs of our community is unwavering, and we are pleased to be expanding to meet community growth and the increased demand as a destination center for women and infant services, cancer care, and high-quality medical care,” said Lamont Yoder, CEO of Banner Gateway Medical Center and Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center. “This topping out ceremony marks an important milestone, as the project continues to move forward on time and on budget thanks to the entire McCarthy team.”

The expansion addresses the capacity need for women and infant care, including labor, delivery, postpartum, and a new neonatal intensive care unit for babies who need extra care. In addition to women’s services, the expansion includes added space for inpatient cancer care by Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center, more space for surgical, emergency, endoscopy, and imaging services, as well as shelled space for future growth.

In the final phase of the project, two new surface parking lots will be constructed, adding approximately 492 new parking spaces for visitor and staff use, and approximately 40,000 square feet of additional renovation work is also planned within the existing medical center.

“Our project team is very focused on keeping the expansion project on budget and on target with its aggressive schedule while effectively navigating the many hurdles created by the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain issues, and escalation,” said Kurt Radtke, Project Director for McCarthy Building Companies who is overseeing the Banner Gateway tower expansion project. “Through collaboration, our integrated project team, which includes Banner, SmithGroup, and our trade partners, have developed innovations and risk mitigation strategies resulting in over $9 million of value to the project. Our team continues to look at innovations, options, and ideas to mitigate risk to the project during these challenging times.” 

Construction on the tower expansion began in February 2021 and will complete in first quarter of 2023 with the campus renovation work completing in 2024. Banner expects to add more than 600 new jobs once the facility is opened.

The project is being managed using a modified Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) with the owner, design team, general contractor, and trade partners all co-locating in a virtual “big room” allowing for the project’s design and construction strategies to be developed and enhanced through a robust system of collaboration, solution innovations, and coordination strategies being brought to the project to ensure operational excellence and end-user efficiency.

Some of the innovative cost- and time-saving measures on the Banner Gateway project include:

• Prefabrication of construction elements including exterior skin, bathroom pods, and mechanical and plumbing components
• Project delivery completed in five separate design packages, allowing construction to start prior to design-phase completing
• Construction of building expansions on three sides of the hospital that are occurring simultaneously

As part of the IPD process, all the major building trade partners were contracted early in design to aid in target value design, constructability, and Building Information Modeling coordination prior to permit. This has proven to save on costs and ensures that the construction team is able to proceed with procurement and system fabrication earlier on in the project.

The architect on the project is SmithGroup with civil engineering led by Dibble Engineering and structural engineering led by PK Associates. Field Verified is serving as an exterior skin consultant. Major trade partners include AmFab Steel, MKB, AROK, Buesing Excavation, Delta Electric, Foothills Fire, KT Fab, Otis Elevators, Stafford Crane, SwissLog, TD Industries, and Walters & Wolf.

McCarthy Building Companies completed the initial Banner Gateway Medical Center campus in only 20 months in 2007.