The Helen DeVos Children’s hospital was a GMP type project that was very early in the design process at the time of bidding. This made for many assumptions on the part of our company and required a close relationship with hospital staff and design professionals. We needed to be flexible in our planning and to get the infrastructure in place that could support a more detailed design coming later. As hospitals, in general, have very intensive electrical systems, this was a major challenge that we worked with the team on to give the owner time to make the necessary decisions.
The project included (7) unit substations, (16) transfer switches, (6) vertical busways through the patient tower and hundreds of panel boards. Electrical rooms were very limited in space and required creative engineering to fit all the required equipment. A few challenges we overcame included getting 15,000 lb. electrical gear into the top floor before envelope closure and protecting all the equipment until the building was watertight. Also installing (4) 4” conduits across an entire existing hospital floor to provide (2) sources of normal power.
Other highlights include:
175 miles of electrical conduit, 523 miles of power wiring, 8,700 receptacles, and over 12,500 light bulbs A Crestron lighting control system that controls the lighting throughout the hospital including color-changing LED lighting. A color-coding system proposed by Buist was used to identify all electrical system junction boxes. The owner was very pleased with being able to identify systems at a glance, and this system is now being used by Spectrum Health in other buildings.
The entire project was documented and coordinated with 3-D BIM modeling and at the completion of the project the 3-D BIM model was given to the owner with hyperlinks in the software to give access to documents at the click of a button including panel schedules, maintenance data, and testing records, and catalog information for light fixtures and electrical equipment.
