By HFT Editorial Staff

The $243 million, 310,000-square-foot Banner Gateway Medical Center Tower expansion project in Gilbert, Ariz., recently marked its topping out. The expansion 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 toweris a 198,000-square-foot addition that will 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 community. 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.

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.

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.

The project is being managed using a modified integrated project delivery with the owner, design team, general contractor and trade partners co-locating in a virtual room, allowing for the project’s design and construction strategies to be developed and enhanced through a system of collaboration, solution innovations and coordination strategies to ensure operational excellence and end-user efficiency.Cost- and time-saving measures used 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.