Turner Construction is building the Harborview Medical Office project, which consists of 14 stories of medical office space.

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In July 2006, schematic design began on 14 stories of much-needed medical office space and support facilities including an expansive, below-grade parking garage for Seattle’s Harborview Medical Office building project on Ninth & Jefferson.

This was the beginning of a new project to replace the original Ninth & Jefferson building, which was part of a GC/CM project Turner had secured in 2004. However, when Turner went to market for bids, the job “came back significantly over-budget,” Senior Project Manager Richard Teddy says.

The stakeholders for the project – Harborview Medical Center, King County and the University of Washington – decided to start over, Teddy says.

“They used their out-of-the-box thinking and fashioned an alternate delivery model,” he explains. “They created an RFP, soliciting development teams to form a public/private partnership, rather than the original GC/CM delivery model. They reviewed best-value proposals from several developers to see how they would approach the project, and Seattle-based Wright Runstad and Co. won the job.”

Wright Runstad and Turner have strong experience successfully completing other public/private partnership projects, such as the Chinook Office Building for King County. “There were mixed feelings about this, since some people blamed Turner for the original budget problems,” Teddy admits. “But our ability to efficiently work with the team to complete the project on the county’s aggressive schedule was obvious.”

At the time, the market was going through a shift where “pricing escalated beyond comprehension,” Teddy recalls. “Public jobs suffered a harder fate, because the subcontractor community became very selective on the work they would take on, and their pricing was reflected in that. The whole market felt the impact, and many other public lump sum and GC/CM jobs suffered the same consequences. Still, the natural response might be to blame the contractor when prices come in over budget.”

These mixed feelings didn’t stop Turner from hitting the ground running on the new $90 million project. Since the garage portion of the original design was already permitted, the developer wanted to utilize this permit to expedite the work. The design team focused on several adjustments to the original design to enhance the garage functionality. “We immediately started preconstruction, and made a few changes to the previous design of the garage by shifting columns and drive aisles to allow for a more efficient flow and gain a few more parking stalls,” Teddy says.

The five-level below-grade garage is only one component of the project, which features 14 stories of medical office space, including a four-story full city block cip concrete podium supporting a 10-story steel tower and a mechanical penthouse.

The 430,000 square-foot facility will also include 13,000 square feet of retail space, Teddy adds, and be home to the King County Medical Examiner’s office and other County support facilities as well as research laboratories for the University of Washington School of Medicine.

In addition, Turner will be responsible for approximately $40 million to $50 million in tenant improvements.

“These are discreet packages that were included in the original contract, and the shell and core team is getting ready to price these packages soon,” Teddy says.

Although the final project is not set for completion until January 2009, certain critical elements of the facility were fast-tracked, Teddy says. For instance, the facility houses four emergency generators for the hospital, which needed to be operational prior to the project’s completion. “Harborview is the region’s only level 1 trauma facility, so when any catastrophe happens, the building must be up and running,” Teddy says.

“When the original project stalled, we didn’t have anywhere for the generators to go, but still had to deliver them within the original time frame. Our deadline was this past January, and we were able to meet that time frame successfully.

“The hospital also wanted partial use of the garage before the project is completed, and we will be ready to turn that over in June 2008.”

“We’re certainly on track to deliver this project on time, and beyond the clients’ expectations,” Teddy says.

“We’ve seen a very positive response from the community. The community has gotten a better sense that the private delivery process may be more efficient.”

According to Teddy, Turner managed to stay ahead of the game by self-performing concrete work on the project.

“This is a big differentiator for us,” he says. “It helped us to better control the schedule, and we have more skin in the game with our subcontractors, from a financial and safety perspective.”

Turner’s Seattle business unit operates with the lowest EMR in the state of Washington, he says. The company enhances safety by offering incentives, organizing regular meetings and offering ongoing training.

“There’s quite an enormous list of things we do to promote safety,” Teddy says. “We are extremely conscious of safety issues on the job sites. One of our company slogans is ‘building the future,’ but we always like to say that we’re building the future safely.”