Nearly 20 months before the December 2010 groundbreaking for the massive University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, members of the design and construction team gathered at the project's site in the Mission Bay neighborhood to map out a plan of attack. Their goal: to win a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold rating—a rare achievement for a hospital—for the 878,000-sq-ft complex.
The team brought together about 100 key players, including the project's general contractor, architects, engineers, construction-management advisers and 13 subcontractors, to produce a plan to integrate lean construction methods, implement the architects' design vision and meet the operational requirements laid out for the new complex by the hundreds of UCSF faculty and staff who would work there.