Skip to main content

Quick turnaround: Partners HealtchCare

This administrative building, the largest in Somerville, Mass., consolidates 4,500 employees from 14 locations across Boston into one place. The project’s 30-month schedule was half of the typical time frame for such a building. So the Building Team had little margin for delays or mistakes.

Twice-weekly meetings that included the client, AEC firms, and consultants were guided by seven core values that served as a roadmap during the design process. Once construction began, project leaders established a risk assessment group that identified and assessed potential problems weekly. 

The building creates an “all-under-one-roof” organizational concept and culture, with a training center, multipurpose auditorium (available for use by campus residents, the local community, and the Partners’ network), community hubs, and outdoor spaces that include two acres of green space and walking paths. The facility is near a new subway stop, which connects the building to Somerville’s developing mixed-use Assembly Row.   

By corralling its operations into one building, the client is realizing considerable savings on rent, and provides its employees with more convenient meeting spaces. Courtesy Robert Benson Photography.

Ten floors are devoted to workplace “neighborhoods” that foster engagement and collaboration. The first floor offers leasable retail space. 

By consolidating activities and events in its new central amenity hub, Partners HealthCare, which provides at-home health and nursing services to the elderly, has eliminated rental fees it was paying for multiple locations. Partners estimates that it will save $10 to $13 million annually from consolidating its operations. 

To prepare its workforce for the move, a comprehensive communications program engaged all 4,500 users with targeted, customized messaging. Before their arrival into the building, employees received details about their work environment and on-site food and snack options, which include a full-service cafeteria.

Building Team – Submitting firm, architect Gensler Owner Leggat McCall Properties Structural engineer McNamara/Salvia MEP engineer Buro Happold Engineering Contractor Suffolk Construction

General Information – Size 825,000 sf Cost: $465 million Construction time January 2014 to June 2016 Delivery method CM at risk

Interesting read originally from BDC Network

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

AAMA releases new document on aluminum fenestration and energy efficiency

The American Architectural Manufacturers Association (AAMA) recently released a new white paper that discusses the use of aluminum in high-performing building enclosures. AMC-2-26, “Aluminum in High-Performing Building Enclosures,” is now available in the AAMA online store as a complimentary download. “This white paper was needed in order to educate and inform the marketplace about the energy advantages of using aluminum fenestration,” said Elizabeth Cotton (Kawneer), chair of the AMC Marketing Committee. “With today's technology, these products can achieve current and foreseeable stringent codes requirements in an efficient and innovative manner, as well as achieving credits through green building certification programs.” The document addresses aluminum extrusions used in the manufacture of entrances, storefront framing, curtain walls, windows and skylight fenestration systems. Aluminum products can be sustainable due to the recyclability of aluminum that helps conserve energy ...
Post a Comment
Read more

WeWork takes on a construction management app provider

WeWork, the New York-based urban workspace designer and redeveloper that’s one of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S., has acquired Fieldlens, a six-year-old producer of construction management applications that allow for more efficient on-site communications. Most construction projects “are broken social networks,” says Doug Chambers, Fieldlens’ founder. His company’s app helps make a jobsite environment more like Facebook or a social feed, where everyone on site is communicating in real time, all the time. An example Chambers gives is a project manager who is walking a site, and using the app on his smartphone to send observations, pictures, confirmations, and directives to other crew members. Chambers says that on one jobsite in Buffalo, N.Y., the Fieldlens app is facilitating 1,000 interactions per day, on average, among the 80 to 100 workers on site. “Fieldlens lets people get back to work,” and not get bogged down on a lot of administrative and paperwork duties, says Cha...
Post a Comment
Read more

ABC's Construction Backlog Indicator rebounds in 2017

Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) recently reported that its Construction Backlog Indicator (CBI) rose to 9 months during the first quarter of 2017, up 8.1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2016.  CBI is up by 0.4 months, or 4 percent, on a year-over-year basis. “This was a terrific report,” said ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu. “For the first time in the series’ history, every category—firm size, industry and region—registered quarterly growth in CBI. Among the big winners were firms in the western United States and those with annual revenues between $30 million and $50 million per annum" Highlights by Region Surging financial markets helped support activity in financial centers like New York, Philadelphia and Boston. Expanding cyber-security and life sciences activity supported markets as geographically diverse as Washington/Baltimore; Austin, Texas; Silicon Valley, Calif., and Seattle.  Though backlog is slightly lower in the South on a year-over-year basis, ...
Post a Comment
Read more