Sutter Health’s Digby Christian is dead serious about delivering the $320-million replacement for Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley on time and on budget in 2013. But he also is not kidding, and sees no contradiction, when he refers to the 223,500-sq-ft job as a living laboratory. In its most ambitious experiment yet, Sutter is going beyond building information modeling’s low hanging fruit—clash detection—and exploring BIM-based estimating, automated code checking and direct digital-model exchange for detailing, coordination, automated fabrication and scheduling. The nonprofit hospital owner wants to prove it is possible to reduce waste and risk while delivering a better facility, 30% faster.
Sutter thinks this unprecedented journey to the center of VDC is only possible through the use of lean construction principles, collaborative virtual design and construction and extreme integrated project delivery (IPD), under a whopping 10-party contract. There is no field guide for this so Sutter and its Castro Valley, Calif., hospital team are writing one, documenting every plan and replan, every step and misstep. “No one has done this to this extreme before so, rather than following a complete road map, we are creating one for others,” says Christian, senior project manager for the Sacramento-based health-care system.