Delicate operations are the rule, not the exception, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. However, one of the procedures carried out recently didn’t involve any skillful surgeons or celebrity patients. The S. Mark Taper Foundation Imaging Center Renovation, which is replacing the unit’s magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine and its 18,000-lb magnet, required a delicate transplant of heavy equipment to ensure that the patient could live on and serve the community for years to come.
The machine “is in the center of the hospital, directly adjacent to the emergency department, with X-ray rooms on both sides and patients passing all around us,” says Lee Watkins, project manager of Pasadena-based general contractor C.W. Driver. Having been awarded three projects at Cedars-Sinai in October 2010, the firm also is remodeling the 6,000-sq-ft Thalians Mental Health Center and renovating the existing radio-frequency and X-ray equipment within the imaging center.