The 75,000-sq-ft, acute-care replacement hospital for Faith Community in Jack County, Texas, tripled the capacity of the existing facility. Grading plans at the design development stage called for extensive cut and fill. Even after adjusting the finish floor elevations of each building, the grading still required a net import of more than 70,000 cu yd of fill. The team estimated the cost of that, even using the nearest borrow pit, at nearly $400,000. Through community engagement, the contractor discovered that the adjoining property owner was in the initial planning stages of a single-family housing development. The team negotiated a deal to take the fill from the nearby property in exchange for sculpting the borrow pit into a small lake. The cooperative strategy resulted in a savings of $360,000 for the owner.

Faith Community Hospital is also the first rural and sole-provider hospital in Texas to utilize geothermal energy. The system uses more than 150 tiny wells drilled below the slab, each more than 250 ft deep. Because this was Hoar Construction’s first geothermal installation, the team used BIM to minimize clashes, coordinate underground utilities and create a clear path for the well fields.

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