MUSC Jenkins Children’s Hospital / Tourville Women’s Pavilion
Advanced features are standard in this state-of-the-art hospital that integrates children’s healthcare and obstetrical services
Project Facts
| Location | Charleston, South Carolina |
| Owner | Medical University of South Carolina |
| Size | 628,000 SF |
| Cost | $250 million |
| Status | Completed 2019 |
| Capacity | 11 floors, 200 beds |
Overview
The Medical University of South Carolina has long been recognized as a leader in education, research, and patient care in the southeastern United States. As the previous facility began to age, administrators collaborated with physicians and patients to create a new state-of-the-art hospital that would integrate children’s healthcare and obstetrical services with advanced technological features.
Services
About the Project
The project boasts the largest neonatal intensive care unit in the state, a labor and delivery unit with mother/baby postpartum rooms, an advanced fetal care center, and an entire floor dedicated to specific health conditions such as cancer and heart complications.
We tackled several challenges early in the design phase including high wind speeds and frequent seismic activity. Our healthcare and seismic experts worked closely with the project architect to develop an innovative solution that combined a buckling-restrained braced frame (BRBF) and special moment frame into a single efficient system, one of the first such applications used on the east coast. This type of lateral load resisting system ensures safety during dangerous environmental events while maintaining open space for operational flow and future functional modifications.
Cost-Saving Collaboration
Some of the project’s structural challenges threatened the ability of the project to fully achieve the owner’s goals unless cost savings could be realized elsewhere, leading to deep collaboration between all team members during regular collaboration meetings. One way we achieved cost savings was by creatively working with the steel fabricator and building envelope subcontractors to reduce project complexity and miscellaneous steel tonnage, resulting in a net savings of over $500,000. This savings was repurposed into directly addressing additional project challenges. Overall, these coordination meetings helped the team manage the budget and make timely decisions, allowing the project to stay within budget and on schedule.
The new hospital affords women and children the most advanced medical care experience available in South Carolina.
