 |
|
|
As published in the North Bay Business Journal, Feb. 21, 2005: Cancer Center @ Fountaingrove, Santa Rosa When Jim Murphy & Associates took on construction of the Cancer Center at Fountaingrove in mid-1994, they knew they would have special challenges. The Cancer Center is jointly operated by Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital and Redwood Regional Medical Group; thus, the JMA team would have two "customers" to serve, along with achieving the architectural design goals. Meeting that challenge was a natural for Jim Murphy and his organization - they are specialists in meeting client needs. An even greater challenge, however, was the complex structural design for the ceiling area above the radiation treatment rooms, or vaults, in the portion of the Cancer Center designated the radiation therapy pavilion. "Our role as problem-solvers really came into play here," says Jim Murphy. "It's rare to get all the players together, but we did that." And once the soils engineer, the structural engineer, the architect, and the medical representatives met together, at Jim's invitation, the challenge of the ceiling design, and its impact on structural and safety issues, was met creatively. The original design called for a hidden, upside-down pyramid of concrete that would reach 7 feet height at the thickest point and rest above the two treatment rooms, between the ceiling of the rooms and the roof of the building. Along with the 3-foot-thick concrete walls and a 3,800-pound steel door, this "hat" of concrete traps any radiation that escapes from therapy equipment during treatment programs. The thickest layer of concrete needed to be directly above the radiation therapy equipment, which is situated above the patient and close to the room's ceiling. But because the thickest point of the heavy concrete had been designed to hang lower than its thinnest stretches, the JMA team was faced with heavy-duty engineering requirements. Thick support columns and an elaborate steel framework would be needed to shore up the heavy portions at each step downward in the concrete pyramid, and the 3-foot-thick walls would have to act as support columns all the way to the building's roof. Looking at the structural requirements for the design, one of the JMA team asked a simple question, "Could we just flip the pyramid and get a better mousetrap?" And flip the pyramid they did - after thorough consultation with the engineers, the owners, and experts in radiation transfer through materials and distance. What resulted was an rightside-up pyramid of concrete, still reaching 7 feet at its thickest point and providing the same radiation-trapping ability. But with the wide base of the pyramid at the bottom rather than the top, the 3-foot thick walls, which worked to trap radiation and support the heavy concrete, had to extend only to the wide base of the concrete layer, with standard wall framing extending upward to the roof. The visible ceiling of the room remained at 10 feet, and the roof remained at its original design height and configuration above the concrete layer. Thus, no changes in the original architectural design were apparent. But big changes took place inside the concrete layer and in the frame and foundation of the pavilion itself. After the redesign: The height of the 3-foot-thick portion of the supporting walls of the radiation treatment rooms reduced by nearly half, partly because they no longer needed to extend all the way to an inverted pyramid base at the top of the concrete layer, and partly because the lower retaining walls actually only needed to be a foot thick. The supporting framework for the original concrete configuration was eliminated entirely, because the pyramid now sat upon its own base and could be poured and built up in normal fashion. The foundation footings beneath the radiation pavilion got smaller than originally planned, because they no longer needed to support the weight of 3-foot-thick walls extending all the way to the roof. These changes saved the owners a cool $300,000 in construction costs. That's certainly looking out for their interests. But the story doesn't end there. Toward the end of construction, in mid-1995, a team of technicians arrived from France with the state-of-the-art radiation therapy equipment. They were to stay in Santa Rosa while they installed and tested the equipment. And none of them spoke English. The JMA team, still working on the final detailing of the building, saw a problem that they could help solve. Jim Murphy asked one of his subcontractors on another project, a plumber who had grown up in France, to take on an unusual temporary assignment: As translator and facilitator for the French team, he helped arrange the logistics of getting the heavy equipment moved and placed, and he eased the daily tasks of finding places to stay and eat. "We saw a need and met it - that's what we do," says Jim Murphy.
|
