To deliver Baptist MD Anderson Cancer Center’s $184-million outpatient cancer treatment center, the owner, design and construction teams collaborated under an integrated project delivery agreement.

Before breaking ground, trade partners spent seven months collaborating on how to build the project. Use of 4D building information modeling kept the project on a fast track and enabled prefabrication of electrical, plumbing and mechanical components.

Erection of a prefabricated, 150-ton glass-and-steel enclosed pedestrian skybridge—spanning 124 ft across local roads—was planned for a year prior to installation. The bridge, which was connected to the existing emergency department, required contractors to install it with no disruption to patients, visitors and the public.

Bridge erection, planned during a weekend, involved two 450-ton cranes that placed the structure on top of two 36,000-lb trusses. Work at the outpatient facility was scheduled at night to avoid disruption of care and life-safety systems.

Throughout the project, the architect’s model was used for real-time cost feedback. The construction team used a robot to laser-scan and model the project, which helped the team plan how to tie the pedestrian bridge to the old building, specifically for site grading of the prep-building pad. The team was able to verify the grade by using surveyors. During the 330,000-sq-ft project’s roughly 1 million work hours, the team recorded zero lost-time incidents.

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