Providence Health System
Providence Newberg Medical Center (PNMC) is considered the greenest hospital in the United States with a Gold LEED(R) certification. The Newberg, Ore., hospital is the first in the nation to receive this designation.

Staff Takes Responsibility for Long-Term Operations
There is always room for improvement. That is the philosophy behind EMCOR's nine-month effort to overhaul the operations of a long-standing client, a Northern California supplier of wafer fabrication equipment for the semiconductor industry. At the beginning of the process, the client company was nearing 30 years old and owned 600,000 sf in 10 buildings, including office, manufacturing, R&D, and 60,000 sf of cleanrooms. HVAC maintenance, cabling, and copy paper distribution, among other services, were outsourced to third-party operators.

Strategies Employed for Existing Facilities and New Construction
The Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response (CEPR) in Porton Down, UK, is addressing the need to provide BSL-3 containment for multiple animal species by modifying its existing facilities at the Health Protection Agency (HPA) and by extending the facilities with new, add-on laboratories. The CEPR conducts basic and applied research related to infectious diseases and manufactures healthcare products, such as vaccines and therapeutics.

Facilities Organization Raises Status to Corporate Partner
Between the lines of every budget, within the operation of every facilities organization, is the opportunity to save as much as 30 percent by budgeting smarter and managing more efficiently. Applying lean management processes improves not only the facilities operation but also its standing within the corporation, because it allows corporate managers to focus on their core mission. A facilities organization that wants to evolve beyond being a service provider, to be recognized as a true strategic partner, must contribute to the bottom line and not merely be a line item.

Methodology is Flexible and Company-Specific
When a roof starts leaking onto the production room floor, damaging expensive equipment and threatening the bottom line, the leak is repaired, no questions asked. If only all budget decisions were that easy. The reality is that multiple facility needs in locations across the globe, many of which seem to have equal urgency and merit, compete for limited resources. How do you prioritize them all?

With Owners Leading the Charge, the Collaborative Approach Can Generate a 20% Savings
Two real-world examples testify to the effectiveness of lean project management. By applying just a few lean principles, the owner of one project, a $158-million, 503,000-sf hospital, realized almost $5 million in savings on the design and construction of the 200-bed facility, simultaneously achieving completion four months ahead of schedule. On the second project, a 485,000-sf manufacturing facility, a more comprehensive lean program pushed costs down by roughly 20 percent.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Service
The Twin Creeks Science and Education Center is the new home for scientists working on the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI) project. The ATBI is a decade-long project to document the estimated 100,000 species of living organisms in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Individually Ventilated Cage Racks in Isolation Cubicles Maximize Efficiency
Completed in 2007, Saint Louis University's Edward A. Doisy Research Center is an $82-million, 206,000-sf facility devoted to research on cancer, liver disease, heart and lung disease, aging and brain disease, and vaccine development. One innovative way the Doisy Center is ensuring the safety and biosecurity of its multiple BSL-rated animal research programs is the use of individually ventilated cage rack systems integrated with isolation cubicle systems in its vivarium.

Design Must Support Throughput Goals
BSL-3+ aerobiology biocontainment facilities are extremely expensive to build and operate, and today's fast research project timetables and funding streams are making it increasingly necessary to design these facilities to host multiple research efforts into multiple pathogens, often requiring the housing of multiple animal species. The threat of cross-contamination in such facilities requires attention to a special array of design, construction, and operational considerations. However, only a handful of multi-pathogen aerobiology facilities have been built so far, making benchmarking difficult.

Two-Dimensional Budget Model Represents New Frontier in Capital Planning
A new outcome-based model for facility planning is revolutionizing the budget and programming process of large capital projects. Instead of making budget decisions based exclusively on the cost of design and construction, the new model places dollar values on future project outcomes so that the expected output value of a facility can be considered during the early decision-making process. This approach was successfully used by The S/L/A/M Collaborative while working with Seattle-based Strategic Equity Associates in the planning and construction of Cornell University's Stocking Hall.

Lean construction and outcome-based design principles were successfully utilized in the development of Pfizer Inc.'s innovative new Clinical Research Unit (CRU) in New Haven, Conn. The three-story Phase One clinical trials facility combines research and clinical functions while fostering professional relationships with Yale New Haven Hospital and Yale University. The facility gives Pfizer complete control over its clinical phase one product trials, with on-site pharmacy and analytical labs that provide continuous real time data retrieval and accelerates the drug development process by decreasing data turnaround time.

Forest City-New East Baltimore Partnership
This 278,000-sf research building at the Science + Technology Park at Johns Hopkins University, provides state-of-the-art facilities for advanced research companies. The John G. Rangos Sr. Building, is the first of five buildings planned for the first phase of the project. The building is adjacent to the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions' campus.