Nicholas A. Slobozien
Architectural Engineering
Construction Option
Palmyra, PA
Thesis Proposal
The Community Hospital project located in Central Pennsylvania is a six (6) story addition to an existing three (3) story section of the current hospital that was selected for analysis as part of an Architectural Engineering Senior Capstone Thesis. The Senior Capstone Thesis objective is to take the knowledge and experiences acquired over the past four (4) years in the Architectural Engineering program and demonstrate these skills through extensive construction driven research and analysis.
The Community Hospital overbuild is a 155,000 square foot addition to the existing hospital that is currently under construction to improve patient and hospital facilities. This addition is approximately $52 million dollars, creating 66 private patient rooms and additional space for when needed. Once these rooms become available to the hospital, 71 semi-private rooms located throughout the building will be converted to private rooms. This construction will provide additional office space, other medical uses, and the space for 80 new beds to meet future demands. Project success will be achieved through the collaboration of all parties including of the owner, architect, construction manager, engineers, and designers.
Analysis 1: Prefabrication of MEP Racks
Due to the requirements put forth by being a healthcare facility, a heavy emphasis was put on the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems being installed. All these trades will need to be in the same spaces causing major congestion issues. This analysis will look into moving towards a prefabrication of MEP racks installation. By using this design it will hopefully reduce the amount of congestion and provide other benefits to the overall project.
Analysis 2: Prefabrication of Headwalls
With a majority of the addition being the construction of private patient rooms, the installation of headwalls is required for each. The construction of these includes multiple trades that will need to be in the space to perform their work. Due to space requirements, congestion becomes a major issue. It will be through this analysis that the possibility of using a prefabricated headwall assembly be investigated. The goal of this analysis is to be able to add potential benefits to the entire construction process.
Analysis 3: Full Prefabricated Exterior Wall System
The Community Hospital Addition currently is utilizing two different wall erection assemblies. One is a prefabricated design and the other is a traditional stick built construction design. It is goal of this analysis is to investigate why this design is occurring and see if there is a benefit to moving to completely prefabricated design. The analysis will focus on the alteration of the construction means and methods in the hope to provide a accelerated schedule, decrease cost, and provide a better end product for the end user.
Analysis 4: Integration of Virtual Mock-Ups
The project experienced difficulties in the timely completion of the design due to challenges related to translating the owner’s requirements, and validating the needs of the owner. This investigation will explore the use of virtual mock-ups, leveraging a detailed Building Information Model for the facility, to ensure that the entire owner’s scope of work is met. The integration of the virtual mock-ups will look at the potential and specialty tools for identifying what the end product will look like and allow for any necessary changes be done early in the design process.
Click image to view individual proposal:
Revised Proposal
Original Proposal
Analysis 1: Mechanical Breath
The first breath analysis proposed will be evaluated within the exterior façade system that will center on a mechanical focus. The analysis will focus on the thermal efficiency of both the proposed change to the prefabricated wall system and the original design. The patient rooms will be analyzed due to how their one wall is the exterior building façade. First, the materials of both systems need to be known. This is needed to find the U-value or R-value of each wall. Once these are known they can be compared and the system with the higher the R-value or the lower the U-value the less air that is coming into the room. The goal is by performing this analysis it will show that the new proposed system is equal or better than the original being implemented for the spaces that require specific controls.
Analysis 2: Structural Breath
The Full Prefabricated Exterior Wall System analysis will provide a focus on changing the traditional stick built construction on the South and West elevations. The change will incorporate a full prefabricated wall system for the entire addition. The intended approach will hopefully provide both schedule and cost savings to the overall project. Analysis of the structural system will be conducted to ensure that the structure can carry the prefabricated wall. Additional analysis will be done to see what the proper tolerances and connections need to be for the current or changed structure design. This means that calculations will be required for the load of the new prefabricated panel. Also analysis of the load distribution on a typical bay will be done to evaluate the capacity of the beam and connections, etc.
Breadth Analyses
MAE Integration
To integrate MAE studies into this thesis, concepts from AE 570 Production Management in Construction will be incorporated. The analyses that will most benefit from this integration are one, two, and three. All three analyses utilize prefabrication in design and through the use of production tracking techniques gained from AE 570 the ability to improve productivity can be determined. Some of the tracking techniques that were taught in the class that can benefit these analyses are Gemba Walks, Big Picture Mapping, and Ohno Circles. Additionally, the use of lean decision making tools such as A3 Thinking and House of Quality can be done for selecting the virtual mock-up technologies that will provide the most value to the project. Overall the MAE concepts will be utilized throughout the thesis report as all concepts learned provide helpful insight into analyzing the project.