Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center Critical Care Tower

KFI Engineers provides all of the engineering, commissioning, and controls services involving mechanical and electrical systems at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) main campus. In 2020, KFI acquired Fosdick & Hilmer, who has engineered every project, commissioned their majority, and has completely transformed the campus automation and controls landscape for CCHMC since 1986.

The Critical Care Tower (CCT) was engineered by KFI and opened in 1992. After over 20-years of use, CCHMC’s administrative and medical staff quickly recognized the CCT would not meet needs of CCHMC’s patient population in the coming decades. KFI was retained as part of a campus master plan, which recommended that a new 620,000-square-foot, eight-story CCT be constructed and be connected to the 1992 building. KFI was the consulting mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) engineer and controls integrator for the design.

Location

Cincinnati, OH

Industry

Healthcare

Square Footage

620,000

Services Provided

Commissioning, Controls Design, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Utility Generation & Distribution

Challenge

Construction of the new tower required the closure and rerouting of a major city street and the rerouting of major utilities that serve the hospital complex. Numerous major utilities located on the north wall of the existing hospital required relocation — without interruption of service. A new central utility plant was required to provide heating, cooling, and power to the new tower. The plant had to be interconnected with existing plants and had to be expandable for future loads. New and upgraded systems had to be adaptable to phased construction; ongoing renovation of the old 250,000-square-foot building and occupation of the new tower needed to operate in parallel during the transition.

Approach

KFI developed a plan for the new central utility plant that involved demolishing a small office building to create a site that minimized the piping and electrical feeder lengths for the utilities serving the new tower. KFI leveraged redundant capacity from existing campus systems to bring about major savings in the procurement of very robust utility systems for the new tower. KFI engineered and integrated control and automation systems for the new CCT using open-source, PLC-based controls with an industrial-grade HMI. This project provided an opportunity to modernize the control systems for the entire campus, all of which had been integrated by KFI. KFI provided Revit-based building information modeling, integrated with the architectural model and those of the other design professionals, resulting in a thoroughly coordinated design.

Outcome

On Saturday, November 6, 2021, CCHMC moved pediatric critical care operations into the new LEED Silver®-certified tower served by MEP and control systems that are robust, redundant, highly efficient, and adaptable to the ever-changing demands of medical technology and patient care.