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January 26, 2015

Exceeds owner/client needs
Best in State: Gold award
Hart Crowser

Photo courtesy of Hart Crowser [enlarge]
Hart Crowser saved $850,000 by compacting soil on the site.

Project: Seattle Children’s Hospital Building Hope
Client: Seneca Group

Seattle Children’s Hospital had reached its capacity. It needed a new emergency department and new critical care and cancer units. Building Hope fulfilled this urgent need for new and better space.

Yet there were challenges: Seismically unstable soil conditions. Construction adjacent to an operational hospital. Sustainability goals. What’s more, Seattle Children’s Hospital wanted the design and construction team to do more with less money so that more resources could go directly to healing children.

Hart Crowser reconsidered one of the oldest geotechnical engineering practices — soil compaction — and applied it in a new way that reduced project cost by $850,000. They kept 5,600 truckloads of soil from being trucked offsite and another 5,600 truckloads from being brought back on. This had the added benefit of saving an enormous amount of time so the project easily finished on schedule.

Hart Crowser also helped create rain gardens to keep stormwater runoff on the site instead of sending it to an overtaxed sewer system. To do this, they created specially designed tests for stormwater filtration evaluation and established new criteria for infiltration characteristics.

The result: facilities that are as harmonious with the environment as they are safe for children to come for treatment. These vital new facilities would not have been possible without careful management of approved funding and a strong emphasis on efficiency.





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