SJ Intra Examples

March 17, 2009 - The Treasure that is Kay Cafe

Ok so we all recognize what a gift the Kay Kafe has been do we not? I hope we remember how blessed we are to have the corporate donors who are willing to contribute to first class facilities. Our cafeteria is still amazing even going on a year from the opening. I am so proud to have been part of the solution to bring patients, families, doctors, researchers and staff into such a great space. Visitors from the design community are blown away by the cutting edge finishes incorporated into this first class institution. What a blessing, but ...

Given our own commitment to wisely spend donor dollars, we have to have a unique circumstance to create such a first class space. Some of the lighting choices or artwork does not translate well to our normal capital budget. Seems we set a high bar that cannot often be touched. We received requests to duplicate the artwork lighting in other places in the institution and it is just not possible due to the time it would take corridors out of service and the expense for the product itself. But you did it once and ...... Isn't it really great we were able to do it once. Enjoy it. Look around at the Kay Kafe and understand how fortunate we are. Others see it. Old employees who visit see it. I hope I always see it.

March, 16, 2009 - Jumping Through Hoops for Hospitals

Many many months ago I wrote about what all needed to happen to open a hospital. Here we are again on the verge of setting moving dates for hospital operations for the 1st phase of the PCC Renovations. Now I know we have to set dates several months in advance to give staff chances to plan their work activities. We have to schedule vendors to move sensitive equipment. We have to make sure key persons are not on vacation. So let's pick a date and stick to it. Well I wish the construction code enforcement world cared about our dates but they do not.... much. So you walk a fine line between putting a date so far in the future that you extend the multi phase project, or you pick a date so tight that any little thing that goes wrong makes new move dates necessary. So when is a hospital ready to open? It is ready to open when the State of Tennessee write us a letter saying it can be used. The letter itself can take up to a week though I have had one in 3 days. The letter is requested when the local State inspector who happens to be a wonderful gentleman says it is ready. Now he used to be and may still be the only inspector west of the Tennessee River. He is busy and has to be scheduled. Whoa to the hospital that does not have its act together when he shows up. What he wants primarily is local code enforcement approval. So in theory you need to secure local code enforcement approval and then ask for State approval which can take up to 30 days to get on the calendar. It can also be next day if he has an opening. So worst case the State approval can take 40 days; Or it can take 4. I am not joking about this. Now local code approval has to be secured in order by the inspector before the State will show up. Med Gas Certifier then Plumbing Inspector then Fire Marshal then Mechanical Inspector then Electrical Inspector then the final Building Inspector. Whoa to the schedule if you have to have an elevator inspected. So say as in our case there is no elevator work. Ahhhhhhhh! The Med gas inspector works for us and lives in Collierville so that is easy. The plumbing inspection is usually simple. The Fire Marshal comes when his schedule allows sometime within a week of the request. This has been running about 3 days from the request. The mechanical inspector wants to know that the fire marshal approved fire walls etc they have installed smoke dampers. The electrical inspection wants to know the fire alarm system has been approved by the fire marshal and the smoke dampers have been approved by the mechanical inspector then he will sign. The building inspection usually is next day by the end of this headache. So each inspection happens in turn from one day to three days duration ... each. So local inspection could take 6 days or it could take 18 days. That is if everything passes and no changes are requested. Never happens. So reality is the local code inspection process takes from 10 days to 25 days and I have little if any control. So try to plan the right move date when inspections can take from 14 to 65 days. And this is after the work is completed to our satisfaction.

So pick a date for the move. Go ahead make my day and pick a date. The contractor says he will be done with the first phase inspections including Pharmacy, Rehab, D & E clinics and ECHo/EKG/Pulmonary functions the first week in July. We have picked move dates to start the first week in August to try to make sure the space is done, inspected, cleaned, air quality certified and stocked to go. I have my fingers crossed.

We are just about done with the one mile outside walking track. This did not involve much money because we used existing sidewalks to a great extent and only spent money where we needed ADA compliant crossings over Danny Thomas Place. These needed done anyway to allow for cart traffic across campus. Not everyone gets to jump on a golf cart and go for a cruise. So now we will have a great place to do a mile. Are you going to join us?

February 26, 2009 - Contracting the Budget Blues Blog

Do you not just absolutely live for budget time? Time to generate massive headaches and as someone told me yesterday, go home with crossed eyes from looking at spreadsheets all day. Sorry to you accounting types that do that all day long all year long, but you signed up for the life in college. Someone told me once if you want to throw a great party the last people you invite are engineers and accountants. Budget time just gets in the way of good time watching contractors behave badly.

We are about 5 months away from starting to occupy the renovated space south of the Kay Kafe lobby. There is real ceiling grid being installed. It is starting to look like a hospital. We moved Travel and Patient Services today to a space farther north in the PCC Plaza level. This gives us room to now renovate the old Patient Services/Travel to house Patient supply distribution for Materials Management. This PCC Renovation project is a big checkerboard. As soon as someone is moved we swoop in and remove the old furniture to recycle and demolish the old space. Lots of fun with contractors. Of course I cannot have the fun because I am looking at spreadsheets.

February 20, 2009 - Measuring Green in the Mainstream

So in December I wrote an article about doing the right thing and going green. By far I received more comments about that one entry than any other. Now this is not a real scientific survey mechanism but I am glad to see people care about improving our environment and eliminating waste. I sent a link to a site so you can see how green you are and what ideas you might get to help save the planet. In December I scored an 18.5 and thought I could make a few changes in my life and get to a 21. I just took the survey again and scored a 23. Try it.

www.mygreenprint.org

In construction these days there is no limit to "experts" and fee based programs you can join to incorporate green building practices into construction programs. Is it worth 1% additional cost on a construction program to track and publish environmental compliance? Should doing the right thing just be part of the program? We have not entered into any projects that seek to gain publicity for doing the right thing, but for the most part we do make environmental friendly decisions. There is a program called Green Guide for Healthcare that assigns points on projects based on the inclusion of certain elements. In some places these kind of scoring systems are mandated by law. It is not uncommon in Europe. Probably coming this way. So how would we score? There is a checklist on the site so you can look at the items. I think we would do quite well.

www.gghc.org

For instance we have 2 Brownfield sites on our campus. That is a site of known environmental contamination that is sold so the aware buyer has a limited risk for the creation of the contamination but accepts the risk for managing the contamination. In one block that was a paint factory, we made a greenscape at the corner of Auction and 3rd street. That would qualify for 2 points. We turned a dry cleaner site into a parking lot that is safe as long as we do not disturb the soil. We took a huge city street and built a tree lined median which would gain points. We took a large parking lot and created a grass quadrangle. Again that eliminates surface runoff and would gain points. Our new Chili's Care Center is 50% glass creating day lighting and we have lighting control systems that turn these lights off and on based on light levels and time of day. We were challenged about a few areas when I wrote about green in December and we took some action to make things better. We have an energy committee that evaluates potential savings for energy initiatives and monitors energy savings success. Our heating and cooling systems utilize winter free cooling for both air to air and air to water systems that save power and money. We have a recycling program which is a real trick in Memphis TN. We recycle and track a good portion of our demolition materials. In all we do quite a bit that would score well on an evaluation.

Some items on the scoring sheet are really hard to achieve for us. We do not build wind generation or solar power collectors which have 20 year pay backs in our TVA market. We are not willing to let the landscaping die because the green space you see around us is also a barrier to keep dust from blowing in our doors. It is an infection control barrier of sorts. We HEPA filter all the air which is an energy consumer. So there are balances to our ability to reduce power.

So at the point of this entry can you help out? Do you turn off the lights and your power strips before you leave for the evening? Do you recycle all your paper and cans? Even better do you not create paper or can trash in the first place? Could you go paperless? It takes all of us to save energy.

February 4, 2009 - Planned in Ice Age the Un-"Chocolaty" Ice Cream Bar Emerges

We may someday finish the Kay Kafe lobby. By tomorrow a planned addition, new mural panels and a new coffee seating area, should be done. Should. We approved the concept and the money before the last ice age. These art panels look very nice but they take months to design and produce. I told this story once before but it is worth repeating. We had an interior focus group meeting including some designers and a few patients. This one teen patient asked us to build an icream cream bar. So we did. The existing ice cream wall mural panels started out as colored dots to represent ice cream cones. We went to the ice cream place on Union Avenue and bought eighty something scoops of ice cream and had a digital layout of the scoops made in house. The designers turned it down because it looked too chocolaty. (Is that a word?) So with the magic of computers the scoops look lemon yellow, orange orange, lime green..... Well you see the result. So we had a blank wall and decided to add some coffee bar type seating and expand the amount of ice cream wall mural panels. Before the last ice age. So here it is finally (as the polar ice sheets melt). I hope it becomes a comfortable place to stop and talk for short periods of time. I also hope it does not become a spot people bring lunch trays and park for extended periods. When we see how traffic flows around this new seating area, we may be able to add some more seating. I just really hope it does not become a lunch room.

January 30, 2009 - Can I Stay Home Too?

I added another construction maxim to my long list of construction do's and don'ts. Never ever ask a contractor why something is not done within one week of a snow event in which local children are left out of school to play in my front yard sledding and building snow persons when I have to go to work. Ok so the fact that the kids in my yard had fun while I was at work is not exactly relative it is related. This past week the wintry weather has been to blame for the following. Ice cream cone digital wall panels to be installed in the Kay Kafe lobby a month ago were frozen in Kansas. Sure.... Our new roof has a leak in it and could not be fixed because it snowed and is too cold to install some roof flashing. Sure..... The new precast concrete panels installed about 2 months ago have not be caulked yet because you guessed it, the weather has been so bad that they could not do the work. Sure..... Old concrete and other debris left round the construction site for months was not cleaned up because the weather has been bad. Sure....

Now back to the kids and the relation to our excuse filled contractors. Am I the only one who thinks the weather was not bad enough for them to be in my front yard and not at school? Are they going to grow up to be contractors?

January 27, 2009 - What Lies Beneath?

I often write about the blunders that happen in the construction realm. So much so that you might think construction is a long string of blunders. Well ok it seems like that to me as well, but I tend to only have to deal with the stuff. You know like stuff happens. There are good people trying hard to do a decent job on construction sites. And they have been doing that hard construction work at St. Jude for almost 50 years. We were discussing today a renovation that required cutting the basement slab of the original hospital "D" wing that must have been poured right around 1960 to put in plumbing drains. Construction foundations then were different than today. In 1960 they just poured tons of concrete in a hole and called it a footing. Today we will drill piles to precise depths and form perfect pile caps with concrete and then pour engineered columns on the pile caps. I have the 1960 footing structural drawings and all the lines are right angles (on paper) but I bet we are hard pressed to find any dirt under the slab to bury the pipes. I bet they just backed up the concrete trucks. They might have even mixed the concrete by hand on site. That I am told is the hardest job ever on construction. So we will see what we find in the hole from 1960. Old shoe? 50 year old lunch? Junk? Treasure?

We have dug up some unexpected stuff over the years. The Grizzlies House had a huge felled oak tree about 2 feet down that had hardly started rotting. The gift shop power pole had to be moved because the first drill disappeared into an underground old bridge span that is now part of the drainage culvert. Yet nothing will compare to the bottles under the old St. Joseph slabs. Seemed to be hundreds of whiskey bottles. This is a river town you know. So we will dig under the oldest part of St. Jude and see what is there.

January 20, 2009 - The Pipe-Popping Physics of Disappeared Designers

A fellow staff member once told me his secret to a peaceful marriage can be found in three phrases. Yes dear. Whatever you say dear. What was I thinking dear. I suspect he uses the last line frequently. Sometimes in construction we have serious what were we thinking moments. Now that we have made it rain twice in the new Chili's Care Center CT rooms we have one of those moments. In construction designers are hired who carry a license and are supposed to be an expert. Our experts designed an outside air intake space that is about seven feet high ten feet wide and half the length of the building. From the outside west face you can see louvers the length of the building just under the outside red colonnade. The ones on the south are architectural (fake) and have stainless pipes in them to vent gases from the MRI machines. The louvers to the north are this outside air intake to the air units serving the plaza and first floor. You have to bring in ventilation summer/winter/rain/shine for clean environments. These designers located this plenum in the same place water pipes access six of the bathrooms for the 2nd floor patient rooms. Outside air/winter/cold/real cold/water pipes? What were we thinking? Last winter we did not have any problems. The pipes are insulated so the designers said it would work fine. The first rain was a tub that overflowed because the water in the trap froze and the tub was left running unsupervised. I doubt we could recreate that rain incident but it happened. At worst we should have had a tub that did not drain. The second rain event involved 2 ruptured pipes. Now after the 1st event heat trace cables were put on the pipes to prevent freezing. Guess what happened? The electrical outlet serving the heat trace tripped and the pipe froze and it rained. Why did this not happen last year when the designers were still responsible?

The fix? Insulation and heat trace tape and we will box the pipes with an outside type wall board to get them out of contact with the outside air. Moral? watch your trust in designers very closely and insulated pipes outside do not work well.

What does it mean when you find you are the same age as the new President? I thought Presidents were old guys. Glad we elected a young guy like me.

January 6, 2009 - Magic Smoke and Rushing Water

We found some wires in a junction box today that were buried in a wall that had been a radiation oncology closet and then a lab. The wires and box were in a new doorway opening so they had to go. Now this area has been built and renovated since 1962 so there is no telling what function the wires served. The conduits disappeared into the concrete slab so tracing the conduit was not possible. So how to decide if the wire is active? A genius in the crowd said disconnect the wires and see if anyone complains. Well so far no one has complained. It is amazing how much trial and error is involved in a renovation of an old space.

And how much old unused utilities are in the walls, floors and ceilings. However every so often what seemed abandoned is something like a very active fire alarm conduit. Wish I could remember how many fire alarm power supplies I have bought over the years. These days we paint fire alarm conduit boxes red and use wire with a red cover so it kind of stands out from the chaos that is a hospital above ceiling space. Old fire alarm wire looks like a light switch wire. Accidently short the lighting wire and the light goes out. Not the end of the world. Short a fire alarm wire to a horn circuit and the smoke comes out of the power supply. All electronics come equipped with smoke. The problem is the smoke never goes back in the electronics once the smoke comes out. It is called magic smoke. We have let loose some magic smoke.

Another how could this happen happened yesterday. Know how to tell if a half inch water line has water in it? Cut it. Of course there are less destructive ways to find out like following the line back to a valve and making sure it is closed, but hey why not cause some excitement at 8AM on a Monday morning. An open half inch water line at 80psi pressure can flow something like 30 gallons a minute. So now tracking the line back to that valve takes on a little more importance. Put 60 to 90 gallons on the floor and the guy downstairs will not like you much. Not a good start to the week.

We had one sprinkler head activate over a sink grease fire at Target House a few years ago that ran for best guess 27 minutes and caused over $300,000 damage as the water wet sheetrock and the elevator shaft two floors down. We guess it dumped about 810 gallons from that one sprinkler head but it looked like a swimming pool dumped. I am much more concerned about water when it comes to property damage than I am fire or smoke. Can not wait to see what tomorrow brings with our PCC Renovations.

December 30, 2008 - Happy Holidays and Aiming for Hole No. 1

It is that time of year to talk about what we got for Christmas and how bad our in laws acted. So I think I will talk about what I got for Christmas. Yes there will be a point to this, but you have to read through the short list of gifts I received for Christmas. We had a family gift exchange dirty santa game with dice and came out of it with a bottle of French wine and a case of Louisiana dry mix stuff. Could be worse and ended up with the mood music CD's or the fuzzy slippers (white no less). Anyone want some fish fry mix? My brother gave me a bottle of apple core liquor. Good friends gave us a wine picnic tote bag with plastic glasses and cork screw that smelled of moth balls. We promptly gave it to a different good friend in another state. When regifting it is important to keep some geographic seperation. I bet the second friend passed it on to family in Oklahoma. A good regift present can travel vast distances.

Now to the point, my dad gave me a practice golf hole and flag. Like a real cup you dig into the dirt and a real red flag with a number 1 on it. Great gift. See if you can find where the first hole at St. Jude is. We just built the perfect place. Only 17 more holes to go.

December 15, 2008 - Going Green Becomes Mainstream

Oh my run and hide ... it is going to .... ice over and ..... we will all be left to the mercy of .... Memphis drivers. Run and hide. The sky is definitely falling. How does a little weather panic us so much? Panic might not be the right word but you know what I mean. Stay calm and .... run.

In the construction world the new buzz word is sustainability. It used to mean do no harm. It is turning into a philosophy to build buildings that do some good. There are actually building being built that generate more electricity than they use. Very few and very rare for now. There is a process called LEED which architects (and others) have promoted as a process to make value decisions in the course of a building project. The LEED process itself costs money for tracking purposes. Some say as much as $75,000 for a typical construction project. The process assigns points for certain efforts like using recyclable products in building materials or using certain lighting systems, etc. Points are totaled and a Leed Silver, Gold or Platinum level is granted. What seems clear is we need to make decisions in building construction with an eye to long term cost of ownership and our ability to pay the bills. I think we have done a good job over the years selecting efficient products and energy systems and need some push to optimize the systems we have bought.

A really great program has been rolled out at St. Jude lately. It is one that should have all our attention. Recycling. At first you might ask what took so long. Until you realize we might be one of the first 5 companies in Memphis doing this. Seems few places want to come get our recyclables but we talked the group doing the city program into taking ours. So we have all the more responsibility to make it succeed. If it works here maybe other firms will start. If you have paper, magazines, cardboard, cans or bottles, make sure it gets in the recycling trash can every time. Someone else will take care of it from there. Try to find one thing you do often that you never have to print again. Then you do not have to worry about recycling it.

Here’s another idea to make a difference. Do you know power strips that are left on use a trickle current even if the devices are shut off at night. Turn off the power cord when you go home. Can you imagine how much power there is to be saved for all the power strips we have at St. Jude? In the industry these things are measured in trees saved and tons of green house gases not released. Small cumulative changes really can save trees and reduce green house gases. The attached website is a personal responsibility questionnaire including ten things you can do at work, ten at home and ten about transportation choices. People around the world are taking this quiz. I took it and received an 18.5 but it seems I could achieve a 21 with almost no additional effort. I think the truth is sustainability is not a construction buzz word, but needs to be made real in all of our lives. Recycle and take the quiz. www.mygreenprint.org.

Now run and hide it is going to ... ice over.

December 10, 2008 - Design and the Dry 5%

Two in 2 days. I must have been stuck in the Atlanta airport with nothing to do. Ever circled over Rome Georgia for an hour? Yep done that.

I figured that I found a spot in the Atlanta airport that if you had enough patience and vigilence you would see everyone you know sooner or later. I did not see anyone but do not have enough patience to test my theory.

I have not described a construction method for some time so here goes. Ever hear the term vapor barrier? No it has nothing to do with bathroom construction. A vapor barrier is used to retard the flow of humid air. Let me give you a real life St. Jude example. In the winter inside temperatures and humidity are higher than the temperature and humidity outside. If the humid inside air is allowed to migrate to the inside of a cold outside wall or window condensation, frost or ice can occur. Moisture inside a wall is bad. Mold can occur causing indoor air problems or this case we had in the IRC. Humid air from 9th floor offices migrated above the ceiling to spandral windows above the ceiling. Spandral windows are blacked out windows architects use to make glass curtain walls hide above ceiling and floor decks we do not care to look at from outside. The warm moist air hit the cold spandrel windows and built up a layer of ice. An outside thaw led to inside rain in high rent offices. Not good. We installed a vapor barrier just above the ceiling to keep the office air in the office and off the windows. It will work as long as the strip of sticky asphalt like foot wide tape sticks. So far so good.

For outside walls like Chili's the vapor barrier is a sheet of plastic taped floor to ceiling wall to wall and installed just inside the sheetrock. Low tech but it works. Without a vapor barrier you ask for trouble. In houses insulation comes with a vapor barrier backing but it is never taped together as it should. Frankly it is not in hospital construction either unless you are very picky as we are. I would guess less than 5% of outside walls in America are built right. Sad commentary on our industry.

In the summer humidity infiltration reverses and condensation occurs on the inside of inside walls. More mold. Ever build a house, this is something to watch. Feel smarter, you can help me train architects to detail this stuff.

December 9, 2008 - Ask and You Shall Receive

Has anyone noticed you can now take the Danny Thomas exit North and actually take a left onto Auction Avenue? I know you have always been able to take a left but now it is legal. I remember talking about getting that left turn in place eight years ago. Now that we are one big happy campus, we are going to try to make a few minor improvements for walking accessibility. We are going to try to promote health and wellness by making and marking safe accessible walking paths. Current ideas include a one mile loop and a half mile loop. If we make these changes, I hope everyone will take advantage of the opportunity to walk for exercise. Someone who ran the half marathon told me she burns about 100 calories a mile during the race. I think I need to walk several of the mile loops to burn off the junk we eat this time of year.

Some times we hear ideas through patient focus groups or comment opportunities like Bright Ideas and actually make them happen. There was a comment that additional condiment stations were needed in the Kay Kafe and we now have two more functional condiment stations located adjacent to the rotunda. So if you plan to sit near the end of the cafeteria seating area, you can pick up forks, napkins, ketchup etc there instead of piling into the station near the cash registers. My favorite story about asking and you shall receive involved the teen age boy who asked our facilities interiors group some time in 2004 for a soda bar. A comfortable spot to sit and get ice cream or a pizza. He drew a picture of a space that sounded so perfect we tried to build it for him. I really enjoy seeing families sitting at that ice cream bar at the Kay Kafe entrance. It would not be there without that vision from that young patient.

November 25, 2008 - Sexy, Heavy Lifting

If you looked at the south side of the Shadyac Tower this morning you might have thought we were building a huge new addition. We had three large tower cranes there today and we are only building a simple one story 8000 square foot expansion to house parts of Rehab and Echo/EKG. Cranes are designed to handle a set of circumstances notably the weight to be lifted and the distance or reach to be carried. The two cranes that have been there all week are supporting the installation of the new precast panels for the 8000 square foot addition and the second one to reach roofing materials to the DTRC roof work. The DTRC roof was installed around 1988 so it was time for a new roof. It was another membrane roof with rock ballast, so the pipes you see running down the building are for the rock suction system. The 3rd crane that showed up just for today lifted the new air handling unit to the new mechanical room that is taking shape on top of the addition. We bought the air handling unit in one piece and it was set in place this morning by a really large mobile crane. Now we will build the mechanical room around it. So tomorrow we will be back to two cranes. By the end of the week we will be back to just the one for the DTRC roof. Then there will be none. Construction without a crane does not look as sexy.

November 20, 2008 - Fumes Bad and Good

We spent another day trying to get furniture coordinated for the lobby by Starbucks. I have one comment. Furniture should be a four letter word. There are more opinions with furniture than any topic you can name. And way too many choices. Our possibilites are limited to those that carry a flame spread rating suitable for hospital use. It means if it burns it is labeled to not give off toxic fumes. So a whole industry exists to develop, test, license, make and deliver furniture that will not burn with toxic gas. How many large hospital fires can you name from your memory? How many small ones? Do you think we have bigger problems to worry about than flame spread ratings on lobby furniture?

And now for an unexpected holiday public service. A construction guy heart clogging recipe for sausage dip. Takes 10 minutes. Brown a package (tube) of breakfast sausage broken up into small pieces. Dump in 2 cans of Rotell. I use one mild and one hot. Melt in 2 packages cream cheese and keep hot in a crock pot. Serve with chips. Done. If you try it and do not like it well it came from a construction guy what do you expect. Eat lettuce for a few days to recover.

November 18, 2008 - Barry Building and the Ghosts of St. Joseph's

We just finished remodelling the Barry Building 4th floor for Behavioral Medicine. This makes roughly the 10th major renovation job we have done in the building since we bought the building around 2001. Since the building was built in 1961 the year before St. Jude opened I wonder how many renovations have occurred? How many MD's have practiced there? The new renovations look nice. Nothing compared to the dump the building was when we bought it. Did you know the the 1st floor conference room areas B C and D were a dentist office. The Conference room E had an outside south facing door for a Pharmacy. Some of the upper floor offices had 1970's brown shag carpet. One phychiatric office had a hidden camera system. First thing we did was remove all the carpet and ceiling tiles. People had been allowed to smoke in these buildings and it was nasty. Most suites held mostly exam rooms so there was considerably more plumbing then than we use now. On the flip side our power use is much higher now than the original building. And no one has seen the ghost for some time. Since about the only thing left from the purchase is the building structure he/she must have gone elsewhere.

November 13, 2008 - Submittal Full Court Press

One of the key steps in a construction process needs to happen as soon as possible. It is the submittal battle. When an owner grants a contract to a general contractor there is an immediate needs for that GC to issue their own contracts for subcontracted work. On most big jobs subcontracted work amounts to 95% of the total. The first tier subs then might issue contracts to their own subcontractors. The owner has a deal with one company but submittal data is to be received from most if not all of the subcontractors on a job. A good general contractor tracks submittals required in the specifications and hounds the lazy. A good general contractor actually reads the submittals and sends them back for editing if they are wrong. General contractors who properly handle submittals are rarer than 4 leaf clovers. So what?
Subs order from these submittals. If they are not properly reviewed by the architect and his enginering team then the wrong or substandard equipment is bought and arrives on the job when time is everything and replacing the junk is often more of an evil. So?

The owner has to make sure everything is submitted, everything is reviewed, and to the best of our ability fight ever second of the day to get what we think we paid for in the contract specifications. So over a one or two month period a couple four drawer lateral filing cabinets of specified submittals arrive for review. The success or failure of a job can be made in this maddening pile of sketchy hastily prepared essential data.

We are currently fighting the PCC renovation submittal battle. We were told all the submittals were in and under our own 10 day review found 13 essential submittals had not been done. We had to make our own tracking spreadsheet and insist it be used. Can you imagine a patient having to set up a system to make doctors track drugs and lab results?
Why does this happen?

Because each time a subcontract is written the author expects their subs to do their job and do not check. If a sub fails you get the "not me it was him" bit. So we have to battle with dozens if not hundreds of contractors instead of one general contractor. We have to fight for quality way before it is built.
How good are we?

With some things like roofs and caulking that could lead to mold problems we are 100%. Overall I would take 90%. Kind of sorry to have to admit that but it is the truth. The numbers are not in the owners favor. The Chili's Care Center had 52 first tier subs. Probably 300 different companies had a part. We had 2 people trying to coordinate submittals and schedules and owner equipment and owner consultants and .....

The battle rages. Modern construction. I think it must have been easier to build a pyramid.

November 5, 2008 - Building Before Buck Season

See the steel going up on the south side of the Shadyac Tower? That is the 8000 square foot addition that will hold parts of ECHO/EKG, Pulmonary and Rehab. The smaller 2nd floor steel you see is the new home of the air handling unit being built in Akron Ohio that will be delivered in one piece on November 25th. Those units come in options of multipieces that are assembled on site or one big unit to be picked up by one big crane. Getting one unit means the factory was responsible for putting it together and sealing the joints which we really like. The contractor is going to cover the air handling unit with plywood and build that new 2nd floor mechanical room around it. Very shortly the steel will have a new roof and new pink (yes pink) precast panels.

I would say it will look like a building by the 2nd week in December. The most productive construction time of the year in Memphis is right now. It seldom rains this time of year so now is the time to install a new roof. You can count on the minimum amount of rain here the end of September through the first week of December. Of course it is going to rain today as I write this but the frog choker rains do not happen until January. No humidity does not hurt productivity any. Freezing weather is the worst for productivity. Of course you know that from driving around here. Productivity on construction sites comes to a screeching halt at the opening of Bambi season. Either many of the workers are just plain gone or they are telling lies about the bucks they just missed. Thanksgiving through Christmas is a challenge to produce results.

October 27, 2008 - Chili's and Gift Shop Triumph

Ever seen a building built in 40 seconds? Click on the Design & Construction website and the Chili's Care Center time lapsed movie and watch the Chili's Care Center build in 40 seconds or less. (Shameless website plug) Looks easy huh? All the bad times are just now starting to fade away. I really enjoy seeing how well received the building is for patients and staff. Not perfect, but I do hope it is a great place to get to and work. We are going to try to do a few follow up surveys over the next few months to find out what worked and what did not to try to learn our lesson for the future. We are going to start with an inpatient survey asking value questions. We asked questions like "Which room do you sleep in the Parent Room or the Patient Room?" We asked if parents highly valued a separate bathroom with a shower. We tried very hard to give the families what they requested from the initial surveys. It will be interesting to see if the families using the Chili's Care Center rooms think we succeeded.

The expanded gift shop. I guess everyone who has walked by the gift shop area has been aware we have torn the thing up. The time has come to put it back together in one piece. One really large piece. I bet the first thing people will notice it how much larger the space is than the old one. It looks larger than the plan led us to believe. The second thing people will realize is the stock is not the same. There are some really cool new items. Lots of really cool new items. I want one of the new lime green branded wagons. Just add it to John's Christmas list. The one I know you are keeping. The gift shop construction job has been another example of a contractual schedule we set some time ago that just does not seem to be bought into. We make schedules but I really do not think half the job subs ever look. If you do not look you do not need to care. We were to be done and signed off by last Friday. Some of the subs worked really hard to make that happen like the electrician. Some of them had no intent to show up until Monday. We had some good phone conversations convincing subs of the error of their thinking. We worked really late all last week and had crews here Saturday and Sunday. Yesterday alone I watched a sub finish wiring floor junction boxes and install the last of the spot lights. (Count the spot lights on the merchandise when you go in.) Another sub installed the quotes of Danny Thomas we put at the top of the walls. Another sub installed all the video cameras we hope we never need to deter theft. All this happened Sunday. We still had some painting and a little electrical work to do this morning. We also started the heat this morning. Just in time.

The real gift shop job was stocking the bare shelves with all the new merchandise. I feel for the ALSAC group getting ready for all you holiday shoppers. They moved in and unpacked at least a thousand boxes today. There is so much to do, I think the opening will be Wednesday morning. I hope everyone likes it. If you take my wagon I am sure they will find me another one.

October 8, 2008 - The Construction Game of Inches

Sports are often described as games of inches. Baseball pitchers nibble the outside corner for called balls or strikes. Football first downs are called by inches. Tennis shots are wide by inches. Every golfer knows their shot would have been great except for the last inch where it was not. A good or a bad day is a result of who gets the inches.

Construction days are good or bad based on inches. Let’s say you are drilling a hole in a concrete slab for a new plumbing pipe. Now the slab was poured in 1961 or 1973 so the guys who put stuff in the slab are long gone. It turns out back then that they put conduit in the slab for electrical wire. No one knows where the conduit is. You could x-ray the slab and look but the concrete rebar looks like conduit in x-ray images so you drill. The right inch here and the core and the water you use to lubricate the hole shows up downstairs and the guy on bucket duty catches the core and the vast majority of the water. Miss it by an inch and the core machine finds an old empty conduit and the water then starts diverting down the conduit to all the old junction box locations tens of feet away. The guy on bucket duty thinks he is going to see water in one spot and all of a sudden waterfalls pop out in several places. People start yelling when it starts raining on their heads. It was just a matter of an inch. That was last week.

Today we have another just wide right story. We were using a big core saw to cut the expansion opening between the new gift shop area and the old one. The gift shop wall is filled block and you use a concrete saw to cut a clean, vertical line through the block. We lined the saw up exactly on the communication conduit that had been placed in the block wall some four years ago. Cut that little conduit right down the middle. An inch to the left and we would just knock the block loose around the conduit and move the communication wire during a planned shutdown. An inch to the right and you have the same deal. Cutting right down the middle on a 1 3/4 inch communication conduit in a block wall shuts off all gift shop sales for an hour and a half as we rush our communications vendors over to make emergency splices. The inches won again ... another bad day.

September 30, 2008 - Conference Room Cacophony

Another what were we thinking moment: What were we thinking renovating 3 spaces adjacent to 3 prime conference rooms at the same time. I knew the PCC Renovations would be a significant challenge which will continue for almost 3 years. The project name PCC Renovations is not all true. A good part of the renovation involves building a new Pharmacy on the Shadyac Towwr 1st floor not the PCC. Right under the Board room .... What were we thinking part 1. We have had complaints about noise every day for 3 weeks. So how bad is a little noise for the blessing of progress. Well I sat in a meeting yesterday and actually looked for falling ceiling tile dust from a close impact. It felt like the worker was right above my head and the work was under my feet. That dude was within feet somehow, but I came out unscathed.

Now to 2 and 3 .... We are turning two glass wash rooms to lab space on DTRC 2 and 4. These rooms just east of T2 and T4 should not cause the noise the Board Room is getting, but .... 3 at a time was not great planning.

September 23, 2008 - Getting it Right

Yes I still work here: Yes with the Chili's Care Center and Kay Kafe done I still have work to do. No I am not on the golf course every day. One of the big parts of my day is actually finishing the 2 jobs mentioned above. You would think we move into a new building it must be perfect. Ha Ha! I have only built one building close to perfect from day one and that was the Memphis Grizzlies House. The Chili's Care Center is a great building but we are still making little tweaks.

Let me tell you about an Exhaust Fan saga in the Chili's Care Center. This exhaust fan is very large. It moves thousands of CFM (Cubic feet per minute.) A thousand cubic feet per minute is a 10 foot wide by ten foot long by ten foot tall room full of air ejected out of the building each and every minute for the rest of the life of the building. This fan moves say 15 of these rooms of air a minute. When you start up a fan like this a service tech checks it out. Then a testing agency measures vibrations and air flow, etc. This goes in a huge report with all the other data to the owner and engineer, etc. and all that happened. The paper was sent and had written on it that the fan vibrations could lead to immediate fan failure. No one said a word. So then another firm performed similar tests the next month and strange .... The fan was subject to immediate fan failure. No one seems to have read this report either. I read it looking for something else since one of the lab walls was shaking like it was in an earthquake. Then we put the contractor on notice to fix the fan. They question the test data and ask for a retest. Yep the fan is going to fly apart. So they send out a service tech and he says yep the fan is going to fly apart and leaves. Sensing my frustration with this saga story? And my lab wall is not the one moving like a rock concert is on the other side. So the contractor first fixes some ductwork connections that do not meet spec and we have the same vibration. Two days later another guy shows up to balance the fan and align the fan motor to the fan. The fan is a 50 HP motor attached to a shaft with two bearings that turns the fan wheel inside a fan housing. Seems the motor and the fan were horribly out of alignment and at least five contractor persons should have noticed this. We fixed the fan alignment and got the same vibration. Then we balanced the fan wheel. Ever seen a tire balanced where the guy spins the tire, looks at the computer and pounds a large fishing weight looking thing on the rim? Same deal. We finish fixing all this and still we have a vibration. So I hire someone else who cuts a hole in the discharge side of the duct and sends me a picture of 2 turning vains in the duct about to fall into the discharge of the fan wheel. The ductwork pieces are installed where duct turns 90 degrees and are shaped like airfoil wings. That turns the air reducing drag, etc. They do not work well hanging by 2 screws. We fixed this the next day and still had the vibration. Almost nothing was right with this fan and we still have not fixed the vibration. Seems it is something called duct rumble when the amount of air moving through just the right size duct causes a harmonic vibration. Why me? We will see if slowing the air movement by eliminating some of this exhaust air fixes the problem. Would you consider this tweaking? I still am employed.

August 13, 2008 - Sign Language

Look up! See anything missing? The observant ones among you will notice the St. Jude sign on the Shadyac Tower is missing. By next Monday we should start installing the new sign. We expect the process will take about three weeks. The sign on the east side is to be installed first then the one on the west. Does anyone know the reason? The real reason?

You might say we are trying to bring the sign in compliance with the current St. Jude brand which is partly true. The sign color will look more burgundy during the day and more white at night. The sign will also be upper and lower case to have a softer look more in line with the logo.

If you say the reason is to save money for maintenance well you are wrong. Every time a storm came through it would blow out a letter which cost a few thousand dollars a pop to set up a scaffold and pay an acrobat to risk their life replacing the thing. (It is not really a life risking thing but how many of you would climb off a perfectly good roof onto a temporary scaffold 120 feet in the air?) Is it an image thing having letters missing all the time you say? You might be closer to the truth with that guess. It does look a little tacky for a first class operation to have lights out on the sign that is the first thing visible coming across the bridge from Arkansas.

My guess would be: Wonder what happens when those pieces of Plexiglas fly out of the sign 120 feet to the ground in high winds? I think that might leave a mark.

I hope everyone likes the new sign and the lights do not go out the first week they are installed.

July 31, 2008 - Design and Construction Rainbows

Rain! It is raining all right! Nothing like a good afternoon downpour to keep our new trees alive. Bring. On. The. Rain!

We are in the final negotiations with the contractor on the Renovations to the Patient Care Areas project. We have been doing demo and some construction but we are now settling on a final price. In this type contract we sign on for a GMP or guaranteed maximum price. In our case it is no more than $13 million. This means for the drawings we bid to all the subcontractors we can buy all the work for at most $13 million. It could be less as we pay actual cost and the fee (profit) set with previous bids and negotiations. This is good news as the Board had approved this amount in March. A higher GMP estimate would have required cuts in scope (less work.) Final negotiations involved the contractors and in this case 30 subs, lawyers and bonding agencies so it is complicated. When bids come in at projections you just exhale .... Ahhhhhhh.

Now for the construction fun.

July 23, 2008 - St.Jude Landscapes

Hey we got some rain: All right! It is so very hard to duplicate the effects of Mother Nature by lawn irrigation. A good rain like we had last night makes a difference to new landscaping. Now it was not the frog choker Amazon rain I would like to see, but I understand it went on here for several hours. It’s amazing how fast clay soil can soak it up.

You might see some green bags we have installed around the base of trees down the new median and on some of the cherry trees we planted along Auction Avenue. These bags called “gaters” release the water as a steady drip over a couple day period. Filling them once a week in addition to the regular watering is supposed to give the trees a good chance at survival. A new big tree will take a few years to establish a good root system before they will start increasing much in size.

We have put a good deal of effort into landscaping this spring and summer as part of four FY07/FY08 construction projects. The cost of the landscaping might really surprise you. For all the landscaping around the Chili's Care Center we paid around $90k. The Kay Kafe budget was a very similar amount. I think we paid around $40k for the landscaping around the X building and will do a little more to soften the look of the north side of the 448 building this fall. The loop road project which involved claiming North Parkway as our own (now Danny Thomas Boulevard), the new entrance road west of the TTU, the closed road that was Jackson Avenue, the new 7th street entrance and all the work along Auction Avenue cost about $150k. The bill for the median strip landscaping was about $85k. This included the landscaping and sprinklers. I know I do not write much about money, but tracking dollars and meeting budget expectations are a big part of my job. We seek competitive quotes and secure good deals for our donor dollars. Knowing we spent around $450k to take this campus from a highway down the middle with a several acre hole in the ground and contractor trash pile dead center on campus to the beauty we see today makes me feel good. I imagine many would think it cost more. This is our legacy to future patients, families and staff. Some day when the trees are mature the investment will look like millions.

July 16, 2008 - Let it Rain!!

So I am asked often now that the big projects are done what do you do with yourself. The answer is two parts. I wish the big projects were really done but they are slightly calmer. The second answer is I have other projects to worry about. Chief on the list is an upgrade required by new USDA standards in the IRC. Upgrades will be neither cheap nor simple. It will require our absolute best planning effort.

The other item that really has me worried is keeping all the recently planted landscaping alive this summer. Blunt and to the point this will be a challenge. Nature could help by bringing us rain: Frog chokers, Gully washers, Dogs and cats, sky opened deliverance. It looks so nice. What we planted in the fall and spring is solid. What we just planted needs water and prayer. So why did we just plant it? Again bluntly it was not the plan but it is the reality. St. Jude cannot leave open dirt to track in the buildings. It needs to be landscaping or parking lot. Dirt is dust and that is bad. So we have new landscaping in July and I spend every morning making it live.

Philosophy lesson: I could be right and hold the contractor responsible to replace what dies if they do not properly water. I refuse to try to be right when I need to act right. That is not the same thing. Being right and setting blame is easy. Acting right and keeping the landscaping alive no matter what idiotic stunts the contractors pull is much harder and more rewarding. Oh the horror I have seen the last month.

My favorite quote from Danny Thomas is takers eat better but givers sleep better.

Pray for rain.

July 9, 2008 - Yep Boss! It's just like the drawings

Closing out projects is one of the mostly thankless and necessary parts of project management. No matter how hard you try to impress contractors that we need accurate real drawings of the work performed we always get the contract drawings submitted back as the as builts. What I just said goes like - yep we built it like the specs said. Yep we did. Yep. (Think a cartoon character, the dumbest you can remember saying the words.) Yep we did. Yep. Well no they did not. Piping and ductwork, etc are run to avoid obstacles (or save money) and no records are kept or if they are they are not shared. The whole game is to insist contract specs were met not to admit it was changed to meet circumstances. Even though I might look at in progress as builts 20 times during the job I still did not see any of the data collected on the final drawings. Then I am in the position to prove the negative with no data collection means at my disposal.

Yep we built it just like dem drawings. Yep.

Good grief.

Most owners roll up as builts and might never look at them again. We have a complete electronic database of all drawings and maintenance manuals scanned and archived in the institution data center. Drawings can be identified in minutes from an Access database. In minutes! If you asked me to show you the ductwork layout of your office area, I could find it in minutes. Trust me here. All historic records since 1962. I know the square footage of every room in the institution. We publish changes twice a year to the Design & Construction intranet website. I need good data to give to you and to future architects for changes. I do not need yep any more from contractors but that is what I get no matter how hard we push. No one on a construction site will ever volunteer they deviated one screw from the specs without a fight.

Yep! We did it just like dem specs. Give me a break."

July 1, 2008 - Happy $$$ New Year

Happy New Year!!!! So how many of us procrastinated and rushed project completions to the last hour and sweated contractors/suppliers to bill you to make sure items were paid in FY08 budgets? I never understood why fiscal years run separate from calendar years but I do know I do not want this kind of year end stress at Christmas time so I will shut up and be thankful we push for the end of June. Happy New Year!!!! One of my main jobs that I am very good at is spending money. Knowing how to budget and deliver projects is a big part of my responsibility. We really have a very good project tracking system. Most medium to large sized jobs say $100k and up are envisioned and budgeted the previous fiscal year. These are presented for institutional capital dollar approvals some time in January with final calls for projects and a sense for what administration wants to fund selected in February or early March. Occasionally we hire an architect in one fiscal year to get a jump start on the bigger construction dollars in the next year's budget like we will did this year for a Chemical Biology 9th floor lab expansion or a new home for Behavioral Medicine on the Longinotti 4th floor.

When the budget is approved and we have a design we ask for bids which can take two to five weeks. Contract negotiations and sign offs usually happen in less than a week if everyone who has to sign is in town and can approved contracts/ budgets and as a separate step approve RSS PO's. All capital projects require the same up front paperwork. We must have a signed off program statement about the project from the user/users and a signed off budgets from facilities or administration persons based on dollar level approvals and areas of campus responsibility. We always do a Life Safety Determination Form and often have to develop a life safety implementation plan. We also perform infection control risk assessments whenever we turn dirt or can influence a patient care area. All these up front paperwork processes are performed for every job and we do 400 to 500 a year. The projects under $100k are performed with yearly budgeted funds from Design & Construction cost accounts that have the same controls: Process Process Process. As we perform jobs we track every dollar spent to cost accounts built into each project (activity). I can tell you within days how much we have spent at any time on a project for any subset of a job. The Enterprise system tracks construction dollars at St. Jude very close to real time.

The short of it is we just pushed through quite a bit of year end work and invoices. And it was a truck load of invoices: One big stinking mountain of invoices and easily a third of my time since June 1. Happy New Year!!!!!!

Think the campus looks nice? We now have a few walking areas outside that are about a mile in length. Some time this year we will do something to mark them. With the new pastries in the Kay Kafe and all those gelato sales, we will need some walk paths. I have been asked why the area on the south side of the IRC and DTRC are being ripped out and the truth is we just finished the north side and painted and cleaned the outside of the buildings. The south floor beds took a beating and looked very shabby. We are in the process of trying to make them look as nice as the north side. We just planted hundreds of trees with some of them as large as six inches. I hope I live long enough to see them mature.

I did get my approved budget a few days ago and some time this week I will get the nerve up to see what I will be struggling to complete next June. Think I might start earlier this year? Naw, Happy New Year!!!!!!

June 16, 2008 - The Kay Kafe is A.O.K.!

Well we finally opened the Kay Kafe and I hope everyone likes it. It is interesting to see how design assumptions about what would be valued have started to work out and how some are real surprises. We built this cafeteria expansion to last for 15 years. The maximum table capacity we could see in that time frame was about 500 people. We started with a table count around 420 and it became clear that was not enough at peak times. Here we are into the second week and the volumes continue to be tremendous. I understand day one say more than 3400 tickets and over $14,000 of sales. They sold $1000 of sushi in the first week which was a real surprise. I think most people like having so many choices and variety. Yes some of the prices are higher on some of the newer options but this dining room is subsidized by our donors. It will never make money no matter what is charged. I have been part of the discussions about keeping prices as reasonable as possible while not loosing too much money. As long as the quality is this good I think we actually pay less than a similar meal out. I have had a grilled chicken sandwich and it was great. I had a DOSA today which was a nice change of pace. I snuck some gelato on day one also. The food service management company has really tried to make this the showplace of their business to see what is possible. The focus on quality has been evident.

In the near future we are going to add four more patio tables and some tables near the benches in the little wind-blown courtyard for some more outside seating chances. (Now that it is 95 degrees.)

This is Board Week so the crowds near the end of the week will be tremendous. It is a good time to reflect on how good we have it here at St. Jude.

June 5, 2008 - The Sunny Side of Murphy's Law

So by now you have walked by the new St. Jude tanning booth. Tans free of charge .. is this not a great place to work? Right now they are installing an art panel system created by a company called 3FORM. They are one of the hottest things going in interior design. They even have a project at the Smithsonian in progress. These art panels were designed by our own BMC department and I think they look great. The contractor implementation portion of the story is completely frustrating. All of this was to be installed last week at the latest. Now it might be done by next Wednesday. We had a mock up installed a few months ago to make sure all the measurements were correct. The hardware brackets came in Monday and they were all too tall. How does that happen? How does that happen? How does that happen? So they have to go cut them off. Then I find out three of the panels that are made in Maryland were produced inverted and have to be made again and were to arrive next Wednesday. I have to admit I told them if the panels are not here by Monday I will never sign off on the bill. I kind of had a bad moment. So I think all will be here by Monday. I found out yesterday that they chipped one with a forklift yesterday and it has to be remade. How does that happen? Then we are looking at the panels today and making sure they all line up. The guys out there have a strange look on their faces, so here we go again. Some day this will all look great. In the interim we have a really nice tanning booth.

May 30, 2008 - Checking Off the To-Do List

So my fingers are not hurting and I promised to describe all the work going on right now. Here goes ... Big breath.

We are finishing the Kay Kafe for the party on the 20th. That means installing all the art and getting final State of Tennessee approval by the 9th. The Food Service operation is going to be wonderful. Lot's of diverse choices. I missed the practice Indian food today at lunch: Bummer.

We are finishing the Kay Kafe landscaping. You might see all the rolls of sod and a few trees that by early next week will have transferred the construction area to a huge park.

Starbucks is going full bore. They even sell whole bean coffee and offer to grind it for you. I bought a bag. Go get yours.

We are building out the 4th floor of the Barry building for Epidemiology and Escrow space. Construction will be done by the end of June if I can get a construction permit. We were begging today.

We are designing a new office suite for Behavioral Medicine on Longinotti 4th floor. This consolidation should be in place by early October.

We are replacing all the 47 year old windows in the Longinotti Building. I understand each office occupant has had a one day good excuse to be somewhere else as we took over their office. Some day this building might be pink also, but right now that is just talk.

The gift shop is going to be expanded by 1000 square feet which will start just after the Board of Governors leave June 20. It will still be pink.

We are working on expanding the medical gas to a few of the Chili's Care Center modalities to allow for other anesthetizing locations than the original plans.

The original bathroom arrangements on the Chili's 5th and 6th floor that allow corridor traffic a good view into the men's room are being fixed. Move a few doors and change a few door swings. Wonder why we did not see this four years ago (or think about what others might see.)

We are activating the final Chili's Care Center cooling tower cell to make sure we have redundancy this summer. This involves some piping work in the basement and penthouse, so people will only know about this one if something goes real wrong. (A cooling tower rejects waste heat to the atmosphere and is part of the air conditioning system.)

You can see the loop road work going on planting trees and landscaping making a nice Parkway. I hope it rains this weekend. Really! No joke here.

The 448 Building at the corner of 2nd and Auction is being remodeled for use by ALSAC. They should be able to move in 70 some people by the second week in July. This will be a nice building to work in.

You might have noticed the demolition of the old gas station we owned at 3rd and Overton. We just hydro seeded the lot with Bermuda grass for the new St. Jude wiffle ball field. Now we need a home team. Seriously this whole block between 2nd and 3rd and Overton and Shadyac that I just finished using for Chili's Care Center lay down space is going to be secured and fixed up a little. The sidewalks are dangerous and the chain link fence is not really appropriate for our neighborhood so we are going to make it look a little nicer. Think Green. The block will still have one building on it that we use for warehouse space.

The Grizzlies House generator: If the end of Memphis civilization happens here we will be able to house people at the Grizzlies House and run the entire building on one generator. We reused a generator we removed from the power plant during the Chili's Care Center project, so this effort is not as expensive as you might think. Hope we never need it.

The Patient Care Center Renovations plans are nearly ready. The State granted our certificate of need Wednesday. This multi phase job we last well into 2010 and includes a new Pharmacy, rehab space, Behavioral Medicine Clinic, new D and E clinics, expanded Medicine room among the many highlights. The first part of the job involved demolishing the old RO/DI space. It is almost down to concrete floor and roof. What a mess 30 years of construction can make above a ceiling.

We are building a new Cellular Imaging core facility in the DTRC 1st floor labs recently vacated by Pharmaceutical Sciences. Some of the other space will be renovated for the Hartwell Center to house robotic processes that blow my mind and cost more than my neighborhood. DNA stuff is so cool to engineers. I do not understand any of it, but it is cool.

We are renovating the glass wash facility on DTRC 3rd floor. It is to be done by the end of June of course like everything else.

We are renovating the BMC art department to bring them at least into the 90's anyway. This may have been the oldest remaining area of any department on campus.

Replacing the IRC process washing floor: Yuck Yuck Yuck! Some times it is great to be able to delegate.

We are working on improvements to some of the Bio containment spaces in the IRC to meet new USDA requirements. This will be really hard when we get into it.

We are expanding the 505 building security department into a seized storage room from the computer guys. I had to give them some of my storage space in return. Everybody wins.

I think I got them all, but if I missed yours I am sorry. My fingers hurt again and I am getting scared thinking about all the stuff I should go check on .... Exhale.

May 28, 2008 - June Tempests and Leased Light

It is another really fun June with St. Jude construction. June almost always brings us three really perfect storm events that make it the busiest time of the year. First, there is always a Board of Governor's June meeting that almost always includes a Grand Opening event. This meeting has two events to make life real interesting. There will be a naming ceremony on June 20 for Danny Thomas Place in the intersection that used to be North Parkway and St. Jude Place where the two old guard booths were. This brings up the second event this time of year: May rains and they are really making getting ready for the June naming ceremony a pain. You recall one rain is mud and two rains is muck and the third rain means you do not have enough money to get anyone to touch it. Well we have had the third good rain and have a real mess for the landscaper. Today we are planting the maple trees and other landscaping down the new median. We are also putting the final asphalt surface in the road. We should be done with the entire Danny Thomas Place median by June 20. This really is amazing considering we only decided to do this a month ago. Snap your fingers, offer some money, snarl allot and continue to expect the impossible with a straight face (snarl) and it gets done.

You may have noticed we removed all the old street poles (even the one that was tilted at about a 68 degree angle) and all the traffic lights. We are going to install new traffic lights with underground wire in the next week so be careful at night. There will be a reduced light for a period of time. The old lights are an interesting story. MLGW provides for street lights. For a fee, MLGW will install leased poles and lights for a monthly charge. We took advantage of this service as we make so many changes in our properties, so most of our campus lighting was leased from MLGW for a few dollars a month. It really is a nice service. I think it is offered to residential property owners as well.

The second Board event will be the grand opening of the Kay Kafe and recognition of Sterling Jewelers for their outstanding support. This has been a very tough project with thousands of challenges including redesigns in progress, code enforcement gotchas and unexpected past construction hurdles. We are very close. The questions I have to answer every day get easier and cost less money. (Today I had to choose between a cinnamon twist or an apple turnover test confection from the new oven ... hard choice I took the twist.) The space is looking sharp. By Monday all the art in the soffits over the servery stations will be installed. By next Friday the nine foot tall art wall from the new servery entrance to the Chili's Care Center hallway will be installed. I can not wait to get reactions to this art wall. It will be spectacular. We are also installing nine plasma TV screens for cafeteria menus and information displays. Two of the displays flanking the Starbucks area will include streaming information content showing the weather channel or meetings for the day. A little high tech splash is coming soon. This should be working some time by the end of next week.

The 3rd June perfect storm is the end of the fiscal year. Some time in February 2007 I told people what I could accomplish in FY2008. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. People expect you to actually complete what you said you would. Everyone thinks construction is always late, but when you are building to a fiscal budget and the work has to be done to pay and the money evaporates July 1.... Well you can see the June headache. I will save all the June projects we are finishing for the next blog as my fingers are tired and I am snarling too much.

May 7, 2008 - Docked Pay, Projects and The Unfinished Dock

We seem to have work going on all over the institution at the moment and I could write about any of it. I want to write about the one part that is driving me crazy: The single part of a project that is the farthest behind schedule. The one project I wake up in the morning wondering what excuse will come my way that day to keep it from completion. The one that man and nature has conspired to make a perfect mess: Yes that project is the new loading dock for the Food Service. Oh the vile things I can say about how this has progressed. It is easily a year late. It is not for want of trying, pushing, attention or straight talk that it is number one on my frustration parade.

The purpose of the new dock is to allow food service to receive shipment and dispose of trash directly out of their operation. The new South dock is just too far. Most of the delay from the food service dock involved delays for the Chili's Care Center connector that had to be built first. The Chili's Care Center connector was six months late so the Food Service dock started six months after it should have.

The next problem became payments to subs that could take up hundreds of pages of this blog. St. Jude pays its bills within 30 days. This place is great for paying bills on time. In construction you have to have correct invoices to pay bills with the right signature. You would think this would be one area contractors can get right each month. How it is supposed to work is subcontractors are to submit pay applications to a predetermined schedule of values for work performance by the 20th of each month. Thus we pay for defined work effort. The general contractor is to take all those pay applications and accumulate them in a bill adding his own overhead and predetermined profit, etc and turn it over to the architect for review. The architect signs real fast and gives it to a Project Manager in Design and Construction and an accountant in Financial Services. We review the requests again, request changes, get the changes and cut a check within 30 days of the date of the architect's signature. This is how it is supposed to work here, NY, CA anywhere in the construction world. This is not how it has worked out here. We have received pay requests as much as six months late. On time pay requests have never happened. So here is a poor sub that sent in a bill, thinks it is being reviewed and it gets late. He then refuses to perform work. The food service dock sits. My blood boils.

The next biggest culprit is mud. Memphis is built on Mississippi River sediment. I am going to give the short version. Memphis is built up of layers of sands which were deposited locally by high river flow and clays which were deposited by low river flows. Sand is big particles which flows water and is generally down about 40 feet. Clay can be found anywhere at any depth. You move 100 feet and drill a test well and the strata changes. Why am I talking about this and the dock? Well there is nothing in Memphis that you can build on directly. No rock, no suitable soils. You have to bridge this junk. The closer you get to the surface here the more you have human fill and more junk. You have to dump several feet of compacted gravel to standards set for Department of Transportation or in our case TDOT (TN). You can not dump gravel on wet junk as wet junk turns to mud and shakes like jelly. So I have had a dock which needs a road. Once we removed the old concrete and asphalt and we received one rain, we had mud. Second rain we had muck. Third rain we had a real mess no one wanted to touch because they were not getting paid. Back to item 1. So when you see road work sitting still and not being fixed it is because Memphis clay has gotten wet and turned back to mud from which it came and needs to become clay again to be bridged.

Short story on soils here: To build a road you have to get in underground utilities with plumbers and electricians. Then you have to rough grade the surface. Then you have to install curbs and gutters. Then you have to install final sub grade. Then you have to install either concrete or asphalt. Each step is a different subcontractor who loves to blame the weather for not doing the work. Or not getting paid whichever excuse is most appropriate for the day.

Then you get the excuses that cause hair loss in middle aged men (me). The plumbing contractor knows he has a storm drain inlet to build which is done by one of his subcontractors. They are busy and should have done the work 4 months ago but waited. And they know there is an MLGW water meter in the way but they do not tell anyone because we would move it and then they would have to build the inlet which they are busy and cannot get to. So they tell no one about the MLGW meter in the way. They bank the excuse so to speak. (This is my theory and may not be true, but I firmly believe it). So the day comes for the inlet to be finished because the curbs have all been installed to that point and guess what the entire project is waiting on me to get MLGW here to move the meter. And I walked right into this trap. Grrrrrrrrr! And to make things even better the guy doing the sub grade pulled the pipe connected to the meter out of the MLGW main and made a geyser the day before yesterday which you guessed it held up the job for another day. Grrrrrr!

So the dock is late and I am going to get it when I deserve it I guess if I live that long.

May 2, 2008 - The Art of Giving

Now about the new art in the Kay Kafe: Yesterday was the day selected to hang the art. We have been investigating the appropriate art to hang in the Kay Kafe for well over a year. About six months ago a group out of New York that specializes in donating first class works of art to hospitals for their healing potential came to our attention through the cafeteria architectural group. This non-profit art fundraising group facilitated interviews with several artists and two were chosen. Their work was appropriate for St. Jude. These artists are well known in US art circles and their work is first rate. The panda pieces include an entire panda family and are really impressive at a distance and up close. The panda concept will be incorporated into the grand opening ceremony and will be part of our sponsors Christmas fund raising campaign. As many people are aware Kay Jewelers has been selling bears for ten years to raise funds for St. Jude. Their commitment to this hospital is tremendous. The two ginger bread house pieces are original brush stroke by brush stroke paintings done one of kind specifically for St. Jude. That is not a poster or graphic reproduction, both pieces are original paintings. In this case a Patient and family were in New York and went by the artist's studio to decorate the gingerbread houses. What you see is the creative output of a patient and siblings. The artist was deeply touched by the experience and I thought others might be interested in this part of the history of the pieces. Each artist spent about two and a half months on these works. Their compassion for St. Jude and pride to be part of this project was evident. I really enjoyed the experience.

So on to the art hanging experience. How many people does it take to hang art in a project? Two you say or maybe six, maybe ten? (I was going to tell a UT joke about how many UT football players it takes to change a light bulb, but I better not.) At 10:30 AM we had three architects, one art specialist for the architect, the art donor president, two artists, a lighting designer, an electrician, a representative of the donor, four local artists helping me hang the art, myself and I will stop counting there. At 9PM when the art was finally acceptable to the artists there were the two artists, the art donor president and two guys hanging the art. Since these guys took two and a half months producing these works of art I made sure they got exactly what they wanted even if I have a clock and miscellaneous devices to move and have a few holes to patch and paint. I personally like the art and I hope you do as well. Art is an individual taste and I am sure many will find something to not like. I do want to attest to the wonderful spirit of the gift and labor of love these artists felt for this project. This really is one of the best parts of my job, when you see how people connect to St Jude.

One of the artists kept kind of looking at me funny and he finally asked me if I was related to John Curran the artist. He told me that the predominant artist in America today has my same name. Google tells me we spell it slightly differently and frankly I do not suggest Googling the art at work.

April 30, 2008 - Decision Making and the Kay Kafe

Guess what we are up to now out in North Parkway which is now Danny Thomas Place at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital that was at 332 N. Lauderdale that will soon be 262 Danny Thomas Place? My wife has a masters degree in English, she would like that sentence. We are milling the asphalt down four inches to take some of the crown out of the road. We are then going to saw cut out 15 feet of the concrete that is under the asphalt in the middle of the street to make a median. So even though it is no longer a Parkway and is now a Place we are building a Parkway, with trees. Now get this.Tthe trees we would have liked to plant, Zelcovia, can no longer be harvested. They have to be moved before they bud out and it is too late. Zelcovias are the trees north of the TTU and in the Overton Entrance that look real nice as mature trees. So now we have to pick another tree species. We can pick Ginkos, Oaks or Maples to plant down the street. Are you beginning to see that I am making a decision as I type this? We have enough oaks around here and really they do not look good until they are 30 years old and well some one else will be enjoying them. So Ginkos or Maples. I have a quarter ...... Heads Ginkos ...... Tails Maples. You wonder how decisions are made? Tails it is Maples. We are going to plant a row of October Glory Maples all the way down Danny Thomas Place. (Lost?) I guess it is still North Parkway until the dedication ceremony at the Board of Governors meeting in June.

We are in the home stretch for the Kay Kafe completion and the Starbucks store. The installer will be here for 10 days (eight more) building the store and then they will train for a week or so to make sure all the new coffee drinks are first rate. After that watch out! The line forms to the right.

Behind the last Kay Kafe barricades we have set all the final kitchen equipment and are in the middle of wiring and piping it all up. The salad bar is the size of the original cafeteria (I stole that joke). We should be ready with code approvals in two weeks. It will take another couple of weeks to get the area set up and staff trained for the public. We have to remember that this Kay Kafe was built to serve the institution for 15 years. We had one shot at it to make it the center of our institution where ideas can be brought up and solved for this St. Jude generation and the next one. What looks great and huge now will be threadbare and claustrophobic in the timeframe of many peoples careers. We should enjoy this new Kay Kafe and use it as part of a great place to work.

Tomorrow we hang new art on the Kay Kafe walls. This has been in the making for about six months. It should make a big difference to the atmosphere. We have ordered 20 more 4 top tables and corresponding more chairs to increase the seating capacity. We have one more section of booth seating to complete. All is finally coming together fast.

April 11, 2008 - The Pressure of CCC and New Residents at Kay Kafe Patio

It’s the end of another very challenging week. I spent a good part of the week trying to figure out what changes pressurization in the Chili's Care Center. When you build a building you want the inside to have a positive pressure in relation to the outside air. Since we HEPA filter all our air which means passing the air in each room from 8 to 50 times an hour through a bank of 99.99% filters, we have buildings that clean themselves. What we try to do is bring in more make up air (outside air) than we exhaust out exhaust fans. Then the clean air keeps the outside dirty air out like a bubble. The trick is to bring in the air you need to positively pressurize a building but not so much that the utility bills are outrageous. Any outside air you bring in has to be either heated or cooled, or both to condition the temperature and/or humidity in the space. Few days are as nice as today was, so it is big money that can be wasted. We always err on the side of patient safety but it is always a learning curve for a new building. Architects and engineers do not model this stuff when they build something. It just has to be played with. As each building is a custom entity each set of cases is different.

So we have had some interesting challenges and findings. In the new Chili's Care Center lobby we have been able to achieve very strong positive pressures on the east and north sides of the building, but the west side doors in the same lobby have been neutral or sometimes even negative into the building. So we figured out that we have built a wonderful new building and an even better strong wind tunnel at the entrance. Anyone trying to get in the building in heavy winds has noticed this, but wind changes building pressurization on opposite sides of the same lobby. Some things we have done have been very helpful. Our waiting rooms and then our clinic rooms have been separated from the front lobbies and elevator lobbies by sealed walls, glass and doors. This separates what comes in into the entry lobby from what is in areas farther into the building. We learned this in the PCC when we glassed in the 2nd floor balcony. We see this dramatically from particle count readings that reduce from lobbies to waiting rooms to clinic or patient rooms.

We have also had a few kick me revelations. Sometimes you overlook the obvious. While we were looking at cracks under the doors, we had some exhaust fans on the 5th floor that were moving too much air. These were simple setpoint changes or minor control warranty issues, but they caused the lower floors to depressurize to some extent. While we were looking at cracks under doors, we had a 24 foot wide by 48 inch tall architectural louver open to the interstitial space. When the engineers needed a path for the air handling unit outside air ducted to the basement, they set up louvers in the interstitial space you can see right under the colonnade canopy. Architects being a different breed of human than engineers did not like the louvers only where they were needed by function as it was not symmetrical. They added them all the way around the building. Where it was ducted to the air handling units it is sealed in a plenum. Where the louvers were strictly cosmetic, they never were called to be sealed behind. So while I am looking for cracks I have a garage-door sized hole in the balloon we are trying to build. Kick me.

So I am sitting on the new Kay Kafe patio looking at one thing that has gone right this week. (The new patio is going to open next week). I am looking at one of the things that makes the patio so neat. We bought 40 foot tall elms trees for the planter beds which I have been joking must have been stolen at night from some Midwest family on vacation in Florida. Who grows trees to 40 feet tall for transplant and resale? It has to be a snatch and grab night time operation. Anyway, one of the trees we planted came equipped with a stolen bird’s nest which we noticed when it was rigged in. Now the trees have only been there for less than 3 weeks, but a pair of Robins have hatched chicks already in the stolen nest in the stolen tree. Time for me to go home.

April 9, 2008 - Opening, Cleaning and Tearing Up

So what is the biggest gripe with construction at St. Jude right now? If you say the lack of choices in the cafeteria, we are working on that and it should be fixed within 5 weeks. If you say the walk all the way around the Shadyac ALSAC Tower south hallway then you are in luck. We are going to take the temporary walls down and open up the new lobby space first thing Monday morning. We are closing the Kay Kafe Friday evening so we can safely remove the temporary walls. By the end of Saturday we will have repaired all the spots where the temporary walls were and final cleaning will start. By Monday morning we will have a nice new lobby which will be kind of done. The Starbucks store will not be quite complete and the art walls we are building will not be installed yet, but the lobby and ceilings will be ready. As soon as we can, we will close off the south hallway everyone is using now to start demolition activities for what will be new space for Pharmacy, Rehab, Behavioral Medicine and two expanded clinics. That new work and renovation will be able to start with final approvals from clinical staffs and plan reviews by the local code authority and the State of Tennessee. We will start demolition activities on April 21. We do not need approvals to tear stuff up.

April 1, 2008 - Chili's Delay and the Return of Winged Allies

Ok so I admit that I had a really bad day. Almost nothing went right today. For one, we are not moving the BMT group to the Chili's Care center until April 28th at the earliest for all the right reasons. It was to be Monday but the 2nd floor is just not ready for BMT patients. We measure air quality on a regular basis to make sure our patients breathe only the cleanest air. This is the cleanest air in any hospital anywhere. We HEPA filter all the air in Kay Kafe, Target House, Grizzlies House, all of Chili's Care Center and all of the PCC. We spend big money in up front cost and on going utilities to breath the cleanest air. We have multidiscipline checks and balances to make sure what we install is right.

The Chili's Care Center like all buildings we have built has been a challenge to achieve what we specified and bought. Contractors try to define lower levels of quality as their scope to save themselves money. I have fought a long fight to maintain our level of air quality and we are so close..... but not ready for BMT patients yet.

Many other bummers happened today, but one great thing did happen at around 6PM. The martins are back. A few years ago during the West Nile virus scare someone mentioned we needed a colony of martins to protect the patients from mosquitoes. Seems this person did not know we’ve had a colony under the Danny Thomas overpass for ever. Have you ever gotten a bite on campus? It might not be a coincidence.

These martins are aerial insect eating wonders. This year I have been watching for their return as the real sign of spring. I look forward to hearing them sit in my window and sing, chirp, fight and who knows? Maybe they sit in the window and complain about construction progress. They have come each spring and they are back. The day ended better than it began.

March 27, 2008 - The Politics of Saving Lives

I attended a certificate of need (CON) hearing in Nashville today to confirm our plans to eventually grow to 76 beds (if ever authorized by our programs), allow up to 4 MRI's and up to 2 CT/PET machines. We currently operate 60 beds, 3 MRI's and 1 CT/PET. We are now successfully licensed to buy or operate up to the larger number if funding is approved in coming fiscal years. To some extent this is dependent on the usage that actually happens with what we now are using.

The CON process is meant to promote the orderly growth of health care in TN. It remains very controversial as a process. Not all States use it. The theory is that there are set limits to how much certain types of health care are healthy for communities. In this theory competition is not always good as customers need not be part of cut throat battles for services between providers with only the economic survivor being the winner take all.

A 7 person CON Board hears applicants and opposing groups arguments once a month. Between 10 and 20 items are heard each month. It is a long day.

Here are some examples of the rules. Pardon my numbers if they are not exactly perfect. The State wants to approve any Health Care expense over $5 million. They want to approve any bed increase with the State as a whole limited by law to only 100 new beds a year. We took 16 of the total. They want to approve almost all nursing home projects. They want to approve almost all home health agencies. They want to approve elimination of essential services by hospitals. Think hard about this one. The day may come when the high cost of OB malpractice insurance prices all small hospitals out of the OB business. They want to approve the purchase of expensive new equipment like MRI's and Linear Accelerators.

Two things are clear from the approval we received today. St. Jude is much loved in the State of Tennessee. We have never been opposed in our plans. We have to follow all the rules, but we are not viewed as a competitor with anyone. Our State values the hard work we are doing and how we care for the kids and families. The second thing that is clear is other providers fight like pit bulls over turf and services. The CON board is a very professional group that holds open well run meetings that affect the health care of counties in the state. Love the process or hate it, health care growth is being managed in our state. I found the meeting fascinating.\\

March 21, 2008 - A Few, Last Details

You might see a big excavator on the North side of the main campus digging up the old Jackson Avenue alley. This might seem weird as we just finished the food service loading dock just as it appeared ready to receive trucks. Now we have a demo company removing the street all the way to Danny Thomas Place (not N. Parkway anymore). Strange you say? Nah, just another day in frustrating life of a construction manager. Truth is we are now glad we contracted to replace the entire roadway as we just spent four years tearing it up with construction deliveries, utility relocations and construction vehicle traffic. When we are done in a week or two we will have a new concrete roadway with new curbs for food service access and also emergency vehicle access around the north and east side of the Chili's Care Center. Now we have a demo guy making a huge mess.

The demo guy in question is Wayne who has helped knock down St. Joseph's, the mule Barn, the old paint factory, the old National Guard building, etc etc for the last eight years. He has yet to hit anything of consequence. He even had a few shots at me over the years but always missed. Since he is removing concrete around major phone lines, water lines, sewer lines, fuel oil lines, and our building power, I hope he keeps up the good work for another few days. I am going to stay out of the way just in case.

March 18, 2008 - Blowin' in the Wind

Has any observant person noticed the newest sign on our campus? The mysterious Re perhaps? Try not to attach any sinister rumors to this appearance. St. Jude is trying to replace the original block letter sign on the Shadyac ALSAC tower with a sign in the new branded color with upper and lower case letters. Preferably something that does not blow off in every high wind and have to be replaced to the tune of thousands of dollars an event. The Re is just a mock up to give people a visual to judge letter readability and color. Do you know how hard it is to get a maroon branded St. Jude color to look that color backlight at night? This is a real engineering challenge. Nothing sinister to report.

Now to the soap box. Every St. Jude employee should know why we have revolving doors on the front of our patient care buildings. Originally they were installed as a dust control measure before we demolished St. Joseph Hospital. They continue to be an infection control measure. When you walk in the building your volume comes through the door with a considerably larger volume of dirty air. Our buildings are all Hepa filtered, but it takes time for the building filtration to clean a space. Air cleanliness is measured in particles per cubic centimeter. Outside air has 50,000 up depending on the day. BMT rooms can be measured in single digits. The difference is that dramatic. I have seen an outside air count of 120,000 parts per cubic centimeter. Think how many cubic centimeters come in with your volume through a door. Now add wind to the equation. We have revolving doors on the west side of the patient care buildings at the PCC and the Chili's Care Center. These face the prevailing SW winds. Building pressurization does not stand a chance to hold back wind. The revolving doors both have regular doors next to them required by code. If they were not required by code they would not be there (trust me on this one). These should never be used by any St. Jude staff unless absolutely necessary. When the wind is blowing and you go through these doors you bring in millions of particles of harmful dust (billions?). Is it worth it to speed to a meeting and bypass the somewhat slower revolving door? Every St. Jude employee should know this: Soap box over.

We moved in the final MRI unit to the Chili's Care Center yesterday. By some time next week we should have all three functioning MRI's operational with all the DI/RO staff and patients relocated to the Chili's Care Center.

March 12, 2008 - Uncovering the Past for the Future

Here he is, long lost construction guy back from a cruise. We went to visit the Mayan site of Altun Ha in Belize which started construction in around AD 100 and construction continued until the 10th century. Estimates show the site covers over 25 square miles and was home to upwards of 15,000 people. Current theory holds that the organized construction stopped with a peasant uprising. The buildings were covered in jungle foliage for centuries. When they were uncovered it still looked like the temples that were originally constructed. The effort this took is staggering.

Here, we are around five decades of construction in 66 acres of land with 4,000 or so people and no peasant uprisings to speak of to date. We build very specific buildings with estimated life spans of 40 years at most. Certainly not anything that will cover with a jungle and still be standing 1000 years later. We do the best we can.

We have one more MRI to install in DI area in the Chili's Care Center. This will start next week. By the first week of April we should be out of all old Radiological Sciences spaces: Out, gone, moved, forward the mail, no more moving to do, Yahooooo. We are currently renovating the previous RS office space in the Longinotti 5th floor to consolidate Hematology offices from the Barry 4th floor and Longinotti 6th floor into one space. This should be done easily by the end of April (2008). We have approval to start renovations of the Shadyac Tower and PCC to reorganize, expand and consolidate departments in the vacated RS space and other domino renovations amounting to around 90,000 square feet. Unfortunately this cannot start until we complete the new Kay Kafe lobby area some time in the middle of April. Looks like for the next year we will only have one path from the DTRC to the PCC. Right now we are walking on the south hallway (interstate side) but ASAP I will move the traffic to the north side (Kay Kafe) and close the south side for interior demolition.

The Kay Kafe is starting to look like it's final shape. We brought in all the new kitchen equipment and relocated the old equipment to be reused. The plumbers and electricians are in the process of connecting all of this up. By the end of March we should be cooking with gas in the kitchen. No more Target House meals for us. The lobby is to be done in mid April and I suspect the servery area will drag into the first week of May. The opening party in in mid June. We should be fine for this.

You know the Mayan calendar had 18 months which included 3 leap days. Babies born on these leap days were considered unlucky for life. Altun Ha is also thought to not have had any human sacrifices. One similarity to our construction I would like to keep.

February 22, 2008 - MRI Move and Kay Kafe Update

We just moved the very last piece of major equipment relocating to the new the Chili's Care Center. It was also the heaviest weighing in at 27,000 pounds. Relocating equipment from one building to the other requires considerably more coordination than buying new. If you buy new equipment you do not have to plan downtime in the operations group and you only move when you are completely comfortable with the new gear. You move to new equipment the day after using the old equipment. When we relocate old equipment the clock is ticking to get it back up and running. You also find the way the old equipment was originally connected does not always match what you thought. It is just a scramble to make it work safely and fast. To do it you have to live at the equipment dealing with every problem as it comes up. When we moved the MRI Sim (27,000 pounds) we had to move the existing wave guide plate which is the panel in the wall that keeps radio frequencies from passing into the room on the wires and gas pipe connections to the equipment. All MRI rooms are shielded with copper or steel plate to keep out frequencies like radio signals that can show up on MRI images. Well the guide plate did not fit exactly in the provided opening so we had to cut and patch the hole. This required the sheetrock sub to do more than they expected and put them a few hours behind the optimum turn around time. While they are working other trades have to wait like the electrician hooking up final outlet and light circuits or the shielding sub making final ties to the shielding envelope. It is a relief to have the last piece moved thought it will be the weekend to get it close to operational.

It may not look like much is happening with the Kay Kafe, but we are in the home stretch putting the kitchen back together. We have just taken all the equipment out of the building, removed the entire floor and concrete slab, installed new plumbing and electrical lines, poured back a new slab and are in the process of installing a new epoxy floor. The week after next we will move the old and new equipment back into the kitchen and connect it up. By the 22nd we should have all the required code inspections to use the kitchen again. Do you know all the food is currently being cooked at Target House? This has been a real ordeal for the food service staff, but they are going to get a real lift in a wonderful facility in a within the next few months. While we are putting the kitchen back together we are completing the new food service loading dock and working on the rest of the servery space. The contractors are working to complete the new Kay Kafe lobby space between the Shadyac Tower elevators and the DTRC/Kay Kafe corridor. This new large lobby will become the meet and great space in the center of the institution, especially when the coffee is brewing at the new Starbucks store opening in the area in May.

The time has come to make the Kay Kafe patio usable. This is the plan. Starting next week the landscape sub is going to install all the landscaping from the DTRC corridor all the way around the east side of the new Kay Kafe dining room. Included in the plan are what has been billed as mature elm and maple trees. We are not going to have to wait ten year for sticks to start looking like trees. This is to be instant gratification. Well we will have to wait for the trees to bud out. Did you know now is the absolute best time to plant things while they are still dormant? The last step will be the installation of the glass/steel handrails. We have the furniture in the warehouse already and will be using the patio by this time next month. This ought to be fun to watch.

Now for the last item in the long delayed blog. I understand the new entrance at Auction and 7th street will be ready for use a week from Monday. So we will see if it is safe to use based on what the State contractor is doing, but when we open this entrance the one at 3rd and Danny Thomas Place (Notice I did not say North Parkway as the street has a new name) will close. Same day, no overlap is the plan. If you use this 3rd street gate, pay attention to the announcements about the new gate opening. I would like to say it will happen on a given day, but cannot until we see how well it is ready when it is ready. I hope this improves access to the campus but suspect the left turn from Auction into the gate will still be a cause for caution during rush hour times in the morning.

January 24, 2008 - We've Got the Power

Ok so we moved in about 100 people to the Chili's Care Center and it went pretty well. These office spaces were about as ready as they were going to be. Four years of planning were good for something.

The new space Radiological Services occupies on the 3rd floor is really first rate for offices. Considering this department previously occupied 5th floor space in the Longinotti Building, 2nd floor space in the Shadyac Tower, 1st floor space in the Shadyac Tower, Plaza space in the Shadyac Tower, storage in the Longinottti basement and (if I can start a false rumor) space under the Danny Thomas overpass, it is finally time the group is housed together. It is a good looking group, many who see the light of day for the first time in their careers.

The real tests start Monday when 12 patients will be seen in the new MRI space. We have had more troubles than I can possibly write in 1000 blog entries, but I stack this building up against any in the country. And show me a better fish tank!

Ok now to the educational section of the blog: Emergency Power! I should title this section "Why would you ever want your stuff connected to a red outlet?” Emergency Power is required by code in Clinical Environments. It is meant to provide life safety and critical equipment power from our 4+ megawatts of generating capacity in an MLGW outage. So you say show me the way to the red plug, right? Wrong! Your home might loose power 5 times a year mostly because MLGW turns you off for a time to service circuits or connect new loads. MLGW would never do this to St. Jude. Ever! They care about us so much they built us a new substation a few blocks east. We have only had one brief outage of 15 minutes in 20 years. That outage was nearly 10 years ago.

Our normal power white outlets are sound! To loose white outlet power would really mean a regional brownout like what happened on the east coast. I can think of other scenarios but they are crazily remote: Ice storm no outage! Hurricane Elvis no outage!

I still hear all the time (daily) my system should be connected to emergency power. I do not understand. We shut off emergency power outlets first Wednesday of each month (12 times a year). It happens at 5 AM so you do not notice, but your stuff plugged to red outlets turns off then back on after 8 seconds when the generator kicks in hopefully. Why would you ask for this risk if it were not required for life safety or worst case life threatening systems? Computers hate these power failures. So we add UPS systems to ride through our 12 yearly tests. Why? I bet some of our connected UPS would fail if we did ever have an outage which is most unlikely, but it happens with these 12 tests every week!

We only have 4+ megawatts of emergency power. It is a limited resource. It is a lot but not meant to run the entire campus. It will hopefully never be needed. Think twice before you think emergency power is really required for your application.
Soapbox Over.

January 18, 2008 - Chili's Care Center Ready

We passed the State of Tennessee Department of Health inspection for the Chili's Care Center. We will utilize the building for patients on January 28, 2008. The first floor connector is open permanently. The connector starts near the new bathrooms at the Shadyac Tower north elevators and runs into the Chili's Care Center lobby. Pop in for a look. The second floor connector is closed just as an infection control precaution. We were able to test very low particle count readings last week and plan to perform the tests again Tuesday. I guess most people know the air quality in the PCC is sampled at regular intervals to test against historic baseline levels to make sure the building remains the cleanest hospital on the planet.

The main entrance doors to the Chili's Care Center are still closed for two reasons. Officially we are not open to patients yet and want to keep patients and families from accidentally coming to the wrong entrance without staff stationed to meet them. Unofficially (and the real reason) the doors are taped shut is to keep the few contractors left from leaving the doors propped open. I asked one last week if he was born in a barn. The trick in the next week will be to transition from a construction building to a St. Jude patient care environment as we have been used to in the PCC. No one would allow doors in the PCC to be propped open for anything. Could you imagine what would happen if a contractor propped open the front door to the PCC and started unloading tools? We need the same sense of outrage to rule in the Chili's Care Center.

Most of the contractors who have worked on this building have been quality family oriented people concerned about St. Jude. There have been a handful I never want to see again. When we work inside the PCC with renovations, we do a good job prequalifying subcontractors and holding them to a high standard of decorum. When you build a hundred million dollar building, you get employees from subs of subs that cannot be screened. I would guess over 20,000 people received some kind of paycheck from this job at one time of another. I picked that number from my admittedly temporarily damaged mind, but I would not be surprised to know it was more. It really took a community to build the Chili's Care Center.

Rough in underground piping and electrical for the remodeled Kay Kafe kitchen and servery are underway. The kitchen slab will be poured back next week. The servery slab will be poured back the following week. Right now it really looks like a construction site. Hopefully soon it will look like a kitchen again. The food service staff has been wonderful to work with. I have tested their patience as well.

We are just completing a project I have not talked about much that adds a 2nd electron microscope to a new microscopy core facility. The new lab space is located on the west side of the DTRC plaza level. This microscopy core facility was built to handle tours with glass in the hallways.

January 9, 2008 - A Legacy of Friendliness and Light

Yes I am still out here and very much alive. I tried to do a Christmas blog and then a New Years Blog and before my excuse is Chinese New Year here it is.

We have an occupancy permit to occupy the Chili's Care Center ... yea. Unfortunately we do not yet have approval from the State of Tennessee Department of Health to perform clinical operations in the building ... boo. This inspection is being scheduled and we should know tomorrow (I hope) when it will occur. We have done everything that they requested and we will see how it goes. The State has a long list of items to check. First and most important is the sign off from the local code officials which has to do with the above mentioned occupancy permit. They want to see a third party certification of the medical gas system which we have. They want to see a sign off from the Fire Alarm installing contractor and make sure the system is monitored by a third party. That is in place. They want to see a certification that the emergency power system is complete and has been tested. The emergency power system is complete has been tested and hopefully will never be needed.

We spend a whole lot of time and effort working on an emergency power system which we have only needed once in twenty years. If we ever need it it will most likely be a regional blackout like what happened on the east coast a few years ago. I do not ever want to see a regional blackout here. If we do from what we have tested very basically, heating will work, cooling will not. Communications will work internally anyway. Computers will work if they are plugged into a red outlet. Anything in a red outlet will work. In a white outlet it will not. Don't rush to plug things into red outlets because we test the emergency power 12 times a year so I can guarantee at least 12 outages a year. White outlets have only gone out once in 20 years. Some lighting will work, enough to get out of buildings. Some critical system air conditioning ventilation will work to maintain the pressurization relationships, but it might get hot without cooling. At the end of the construction process, to see how things really work, we perform what is called a black site test. It is really simple. We pull the power to the building and see what runs and what messes up. It is hard to do it in an occupied building so it really only usually happens once maybe twice right before a building is opened.

From my perspective it seems almost nothing has gone right in the Chili's Care Center the past few months, but I have been in the path of a blowtorch so it is hard to be objective. We are bringing online a huge building, with considerable state of the art equipment. The building is really quite spectacular. One of the guiding principles we used in designing the interiors was utilizing natural light. We have made a real effort to bring natural light into the facility in ways we have not tried before. We have large windows 30" to the ceiling in all exterior rooms. We have significant skylights in the atrium. We have large glass elevator lobbies that serve as a way of guiding, so when you get off the elevator you become oriented to the campus by the vista. In addition, we have complete glass connectors.

There are some natural light ideas that are more subtle. If you have seen a prism, you know natural light is made of colors red to purple. We used these colors for the interiors of the building. All the paint, floors, art, signage has been kept in the pallet of the colors of natural light. If you are here at night and look from a distance at the stacked elevator lobbies you will see walls painted in the natural light progression. I have not driven over the bridge from the west yet and wonder if this reads from the interstate, but it was meant to add some playfulness to the building at night. We added a few round LED light fixtures in the 1st and 2nd floor connectors that change color or can be set for different colors. This can be seen from outside. A tremendous amount of work has gone into the Family Friendly side of this building. After all the struggles of the last few months, I hope this friendliness becomes the legacy. When you go in the building look for the colors and look for the curves meant to match the representation of the arc in our logo. If you do not notice that kind of stuff at least visit the fish.

December 11, 2007 - Contractors Level with John

What an absolute challenge it has become to finish and occupy a building. As you have seen, we opened the Kay Kafe dining room area because we had to get on with the rest of the project to finish hopefully in my lifetime. As I type we are installing a temporary wall to block off the old dining room. It should be rubble in a landfill by the end of next week. The new dining room space is not done, but the work remaining is minor. We have to add maple millwork and glass panels on the booth seating. There are blank walls that will hold large art pieces and light fixtures to illuminate them that are lacking. The outside patio is hopelessly behind. I like what turned out but I wish we were really completely done.

Finishing the Chili's Care Center has proven to be a bear. It is hard to pick strong enough words. Almost all the contractors on site are convinced someone else is holding up the job. It is never them. I got real mad about doors not working and made all subs connected with door work walk to every one. It took us almost four hours. Everyone there left guilty as charged with a list to fix immediately. At least one hundred doors were messed up. It can take up to five subs to make one door work. First the concrete has to be poured level so the door swings and does not stick. Simple huh? We had five doors that could not swing open or closed because the slab is that far off in the swing of a door. Another sub has to set the door frame into the slab. If the frame is out of square by as little as 1/4“ the door might not shut. We had twenty something of these. The solution here is a big hammer: No joke. Then a different sub hangs the doors hopefully in the right place. Then another sub puts the door hardware on the door. If you have a card reader add a security sub, a security sub low voltage electrician and a power electrician. Put them all on a project, shake not stir and the cocktail you end up with is not drinkable. It kind of smells rotten. So we walked for four hours and listened to endless wining: It was painful. I asked myself why our general contractor cannot work this out, but that is another blog.

Take the door coordination mess and multiply it by one hundred other whining, underperforming subs and you see what it is like to finish a large building.

November 20, 2007 - Bring Lawyers, Elevators and Money

So I am walking down the hall with nothing really to do ( just open two multi million dollar facilities at the same time) and I am told to write a blog before Thanksgiving. Now I do not know what happens if I do not, so here goes.

The Chili's Care Center Grand Opening Ceremony and staff open house went off with mostly positive comments. If you toured the building you know two things, this is a big building and it is not done. The big building part has been apparent to everyone who has to walk up the stairs six times a day because the last thing done on any construction site is the elevators. Getting an elevator finished on any building involves careful planning, wads of cash and lawyers. Let me explain. Elevators do more than come when you push an up arrow. They have to respond to a fire alarm and travel to the primary recall floor (1st) or secondary recall floor if the primary floor is burning (2nd). This involves interlocks with the fire alarm system which is also one of the last systems to be finished in a building. The elevator also has to connect to the phone system so you can call out from the cab to the PBX if the car sticks between floors. This involves coordination with the cabling vendor and activation of the owner's phone system. The owner will only activate the phone system when the data rooms in question are clean and cold which again only happens near the end of the job. Our elevators also have a capture feature such that authorized persons in an emergency can capture the car to handle the emergency. This requires coordination with the security vendor who also has their own data cabling subcontractor. This also is very close to the last task done on a project. This brings me to the wads of cash as all these people want to be paid. Many also try to convince the owner the scope was not in their original contract. They try and they fail here, but it wastes time as they try and fail to get more money to work together. Complications arise as not every system communicates the same way from job to job so we go back to rule one which is it takes much coordination to activate an elevator. This brings us to rule three the lawyers. The elevator company will not allow the elevators to be operated in the building until all of the above is done and signed off by the local elevator inspector. So we walk until the elevator inspector signs saying the elevators are fit to use and the lawyers for the elevator company are then appeased. Till then we walk. There is one side deal a general contractor can make that allows them and them alone to use the elevator on a temporary basis with an operator in the care under their direct control only. This only happens if the general contractor signs necessary legal waivers to use the elevator the owner is paying for all along but can not use. Get it? Till then we walk. Getting elevator access to move in freezers, chairs, tables, etc for the owner has been one of the supreme hassles of this project. Try loading 340,000 square feet of equipment into a building with one functioning elevator that 400 others are trying to use. Coordination, cash and lawyers ( by the way I have never actually seen the lawyers in question, but I know they are out there ... riding up an elevator).

The Kay Kafe may be the nicest space we have built on campus ever. If it is not, then the nicest space is the new Chili's Care Center 2nd floor in patient unit. We should have all the code approvals next week to open the new space some time the week of December 3, 2007. There is just not that much more that can go wrong to keep it from opening. This list of items that has gone wrong is way to long to mention here. We have all the light fixtures but two which is a real accomplishment given that we purchased them from all of the hardest to deal with specialty lighting manufacturers in the country. (This is an over statement, but after picking on lawyers in the last paragraph I have to pick on someone directly part of the construction zoo.) We have cold cathode lighting which we have never used before you can see now in the round clouds in the new elevator lobby. We used long wall cove strip fixtures with a bulb every six inches. We are using computer controlled led light strips that can change light colors by mode, time of day, whim. We have computer controlled diming systems for nearly every light mentioned. We also have specialty light washer fixtures to wash the new art walls. (Art to come later.) This is really going to be nice.

November 7, 2007 - Rollin' On the River

So it is about 6:30 PM Wednesday night and all is as well as it can be so far in the Chili's Care Center: kind of little things happening tonight. We had a crane pick the 3 Tesla MRI up from inside the MRI trailer on the south side of campus, load on a truck and move to the Chili's Care Center. Yesterday we took out a perfectly good wall by drilling bolts through a perfectly good new precast panel and lifted the pink concrete precast out of the way. The MRI riggers just finished loading in all the electrical panels and piping, cables, stuff and are now set to pick up the magnet from the tuck and load it onto a forklift to drive under the new Chili's Care Center colonnade into the hole in the wall. Hopefully tonight it will sit in it's new home. The new MRI rooms are on the south and west sides of the Chili's Care Center 1st floor. When we added the colonnade covered walkway we made rigging the magnet about 100 times harder. I frankly could not stay and watch. The vision of a $3.5 million MRI rolling down the hill was too much for me. The MRI is round and looks like it would roll pretty well.

We were having so much fun rolling, I mean moving the MRI that we decided to move the CT/PET the same night. Now the CT/PET does not cost as much as the MRI, but I doubt there is really that much difference. I know I cannot afford either. This piece of equipment is going to roll from the Shadyac ALSAC Tower 1st floor through the dining room then through the kitchen out to what is left of the old dock. From there it will roll through the new connector (that is not quite ready and looks like a construction site) into the new Chili's Care Center lobby (which also looks like a construction site). From there it has to go past the new elevators to an east-west hallway until turning north on another hallway to then go west on a third hallway and then north on a fourth hallway again to the new room. Follow all that. I think that one PET section weighs in at 8000 pounds, so I could not watch that either. I counted no fewer than 20 extension cords in the way earlier today. By my count we rolled through 10 sets of double doors from the old home to the new.

It was just a simple night of construction. On top of this we are forming concrete sideways in the new front entry way under the stars and some portable lights. In the morning we will open our new temporary gate on North Parkway to see how long a line we can form out to 3rd street. We had to open the new gate and close off North Parkway for good to take the Chili's Care Center construction fences down in order to finish the landscape grading and a new sidewalk to the new parking garage. I wonder how many people will start parking in the new parking garage now that all the fences will be down and we should not have to play Frogger to cross the street. Yes there will be a new 15 mph speed limit on the captured North Parkway section. Since no one obeys signs there will be speed bumps to slow you down. I am sure some of you reading this might have found this out already as you came to work this morning.

How much more change can we do in a week? Let's see, we might open the new Kay Kafe dining space to begin setting up for use next Thursday. I am kind of at the mercy of a fire marshal inspection, but we are trying to get the area ready for use. All the new banquet seating is here, the chairs are here, the tables are here. The Coke guy even showed up to figure out how he is going to install his syrup containers and tubing. If the Coke guy is ready I think we must be close.

Enough change for a night. I need to go see if we rolled a magnet. How's that blog for those that thought my last two were boring?

November 5, 2007 - First Chili's Care Center Sign

At least one thing went as planned. The first Chili's Care Center sign is installed with operational lights on the north side of the Chili's Care Center. It looks great.

November 2, 2007 - Fun and Crazy Times

The next month will be one of the most exciting in construction memory. Exciting or foolish it will be one or the other. We have a Grand Opening party for the Chili's Care Center the 14th and 15th of November. Bring 1000 of your closest friends. We are starting to relocate existing Radiation Sciences equipment Monday. Up to now we have been having fun (not) with new equipment. It gets real Monday.

We are trying to open the new dining area for seating the same time. The dining operation will stay where it is until after thanksgiving, but it is time to get food service out of the lobbies and hallways.

To make this really fun we are going to close North Parkway and take control of the Chili's Care Center site. More on this when we know exactly what that means.

October 12, 2007 - Chili's Care Center Home Stretch

The Chili's Care Center work has hit a new level of what is the right word, frenzy, chaos, desperation? Perhaps the right picture is a beehive. People are coming and going out of any door or driveway that is not temporarily or permanently blocked. Most of the blocked corridors in the Chili's Care Center first floor and the Kay Kafe for that matter involve the installation of terrazzo floor. You see the results of the new terrazzo in the Shadyac ALSAC Tower first floor north lobby. This is but 5% at most of the terrazzo we are presently installing or will install in the next three weeks. To install terrazzo, the contractor removes existing flooring systems and glue and wet sands the area. They then install zinc strips on the floor that serve as demarcations for different colors or individual pours. An epoxy based slurry is mixed up in a mixer that looks like a rotating metal bushel basket. The terrazzo installer mixes components from different canvas bags of stone, epoxy base, color tint, etc. In the Food Service case they mixed in pieces of blue and green glass and sea shell. In the Chili's Care Center there the zinc strips that separate different color bands and shapes. Let me try to describe what the Chili's Care Center flooring looks like. In the center of the space is a 40 foot tall blue glass column. You will have to trust me it is blue glass, because it is just a frame right now. The flooring is supposed to resemble ripples as if a pebble was dropped in water at this center well. Different color blue bands move out in concentric circles from the light glass column. There are walls and doors and different spaces, and the ripple is continuous through each of these structures. In the main lobby the ripples are terrazzo. In the waiting rooms the ripples are standard VCT tile but they line up to keep the image. Floating on the ripples are a series of different color circles. Think of different color and size beach balls riding the ripples. Add to all this area a series of large curved skylights and you have a really colorful wonderful space. I really hope people enjoy it.

On the Kay Kafe project we closed the east entrance to the dining room to building the new dining room entrance. This is a very large demo phase and a substantial terrazzo job. It was just not possible to leave an east path to the dining room. This is a mess that I wish we could avoid. We just have to build this entrance fast. Architects never think of the pain they cause when they sketch renovation ideas. Phasing in work is never considered when they dream their perfect space dreams. Uhgg!

Orange barrels are back in force. We have started installing temporary chain link fence so we can remove the ornamental metal panels along North Parkway and move them to Auction. We wish we could have just taken them down and moved them, but we need to maintain campus security and we need to do the work now. We will save about $150k reusing the metal fence, so I hope everyone can put up with chain link until North Parkway closes.

October 5, 2007 - Closures and Countertops

In a previous blog I wrote that North Parkway would close down and it closed just as I said it would ...... the fifth time I said it would. Even as I was announcing the road would close I wondered what would mess it up this time. It was really amazing the number of people who went right by the barricade at 3rd street only to find out the road was closed and had to turn around. Hundreds. People just do not read signs. No Parking, No Smoking, Speed Zone 15 MPH no one reads signs. We even watched a member of a certain law enforcement agency go around the barricades and cut through the dirt instead of going around.

Tomorrow morning I will be a target at the Health Fair. A target in a dunk booth. The gauntlet has been thrown down that certain other targets will raise more money than I. I am convinced I have displaced enough people and demolished so many perfectly fine work environments that a long line will form to get even. I just hope the water is warm.

The Chili's Care Center is beginning to look like the place we designed. It is starting to resemble all the renderings we paid to have made when the building was just dirt. I hope the reality is better than the images. The area with the largest concentration of effort right now is the main entry and connectors. One sub is installing terrazzo floor while another is two feet away on a ladder installing ductwork with another guy feet away installing lights. Turn the corner and someone else is finishing a wall. It is really exciting to see it coming together and a real mess. It is strange how the end of the job seems to be the messiest. Pouring concrete is cleaner than finishing walls and hauling off all the unused pieces of drywall, caulk tubes, conduit, fittings, wire pieces, etc. It is just a mess.

The Kay Kafe dining room is set to open November 12, 2007. We have had to wait for new countertops to be manufactured. It turns out we picked a counter top product I even saw in a local hardware warehouse that cracks when it is cut. I wonder how many homes have this bad product installed. The manufacturer stopped making the color we needed of the line and we had to waste two weeks picking a replacement product and color. I have heard these excuses so many times, I insisted on seeing a letter from the manufacturer and one was actually produced. The short story is everything else in the dining room will be done by the end of August except all the new counter tops. To open the new cafeteria, I have to close down the east (DTRC) entrance to the existing dining room and the hallway to Shadyac ALSAC Tower tonight to install the new terrazzo floor in the entry. We are going to reopen an this east west path between the DTRC and Shadyac ALSAC tower north elevator lobby as fast as we can, but for at least three weeks we will be back to walking around the south corridor in the Shadyac ALSAC tower. We moved the teller machines yesterday back to their original location so we can finish the terrazzo floor and renovate this north side east west walkway. Confused yet? The hallway in question used to have the ABC wall, but we are redoing and moving the ABC wall to the newly renovated lobby. Confused yet?

September 27, 2007 - Closing North Parkway

I am sure many people want to know the truth about the North Parkway closure. I would like to know the truth about the North Parkway closure. The truth remains they will close North Parkway the day I am driving down the road late for an appointment. I do know some of what has happened since the blog entry in which I informed everyone that North Parkway would close. Within an hour of publishing that entry, I was informed the contractor found a 10 inch water main that was too high an elevation and had to be lowered. Immediate change of plans and a notice was issued that the road would not close after all. It turns out Auction Avenue has a 24 inch water main and a 10 inch water main. Same water, same source, same 90 something pound pressure line, but they were installed at different times and the 10 inch line became a problem. So, MLGW removed the 10 inch line and tied it back into the 24 inch line. This has been completed. they did it without creating a scene. Imagine your shower which is at something less than 90 pound pressure. It comes out usually a half inch line. Imagine the mess of a broken 24 inch water main at a higher pressure. So doing away with the 10 inch line was probably a good long term strategy.

This brings us back to when will North Parkway close. It might just close next week. If it closes next week, the way to get east west will be two blocks north on Mill Street. The roadway then might be reopened to allow a lane each way to run from North Parkway to Auction. Again this is might, maybe, possibly, who knows kind of information. You would think there is a well oiled plan in place, but it is more of a framework for a plan that is in place. With all the groups having something to do with realigning a roadway, that is as good as it gets.

September 24, 2007 - Paving the Road to Completion

I know this is a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week operation, but we do save a considerable amount of construction work for the weekends when the majority of staff is out of the way. We do a considerable amount of work on Saturdays because we want to make a really big mess, clog the roads with cement trucks, or make really load noises. The biggest example of this principle occurred when we poured the Chili's Care Center mat foundation and brought in 900 cement truck loads in around 15 hours. This past weekend had a few events. We paved the 160 Shadyac Avenue parking lot. This is the royal we, because the guys who do asphalt paving in the summer are right up there with roofers for jobs that are not all that fun. We managed to dig up one of the sensor cables that work the automatic gates so the gates did not work automatically first thing this morning. Automatic gates have little sensor wires in the ground that cause a current when the metal of a car passes over them. These cables either open a gate usually on the way out or keep the gate from closing on a car if the car is still in the swing of the gate. No photo eyes, or people with cameras, it is all little sensor cables in the ground. Thieves can defeat these by...you didn't actually think I was going to tell you, did you? Besides, it's an industry secret. I have used that trick to get my car out of a locked lot once in my past. Legally, I worked at the company that locked me out. I promise.

We also soil-cemented the new drive road west of the TTU on Friday. Now there is a messy job. The contractor wanted to do the work last Wednesday, but we kind of said no way. First you take a freshly graded road with curbs in place and you mix cement into the existing soil. This gets mixed up and spread on everyone's car for half a mile, add a little water and you have the perfect subsurface for an asphalt driveway. That and 100 really mad drivers who come out to their cars to see cement grit covering usually the upwind side of the car. We do that work on Saturdays.

We also opened the ALSAC Shadyac 1st floor north elevator lobby. Friday it was trashed and the walls were not sanded or painted. Saturday they sanded the walls but they looked terrible. The floors were covered in masonite panels to protect the floor. The new bathrooms were trashed. Between Saturday at 4PM and Monday this morning the contractor finished the walls and bathrooms and our staff cleaned up real well. It looks real nice, but the lights are not done. The art is not on the walls. The bathrooms have a few missing mirrors. At least we can walk on the floors.

September 14, 2007 - Can't You Read the Signs

I have it on as good authority as can be counted on with contractors that North Parkway at Danny Thomas will close for good next Thursday September 20, 2007. North Parkway will still be a public street from the west for some time. We are trying to institute a new gate on Auction and 7th street before the start of 2008. Keep up your guard crossing the street. The people who drive west on North Parkway and ignore the dead end road signs are going to fly back out angry at having to go around. What was that song, "signs signs everywhere a sign?" I am convinced no one reads signs. If it does not blink, it is optional.

The new Kay Kafe dining room is going to open some time soon. I can say I really think it will be within the month. This is going to be really nice. Like way nicer than any public gathering space I have seen in Memphis. Every light in the place is a specialty fixture produced by a company I have never heard of for a first class look. Hard to get a ship date from these specialty fixture suppliers though. The reason for my guarded optimism that we will see the new dining space within the month. That is the good news. The bad news is the worse part is ahead of us. The plan change 6, 7 or 8 (I lost count) calls for significant changes to the kitchen. We never see the kitchen, but we will miss it for 55 days as we add significant new capacity to consolidate patient meal preparation and catering growth. Food options will be available, but the choices will involve a temporary change in the way we go about our day. Food Service will handle these communications in the coming weeks. I am just making the mess. The new terrazzo floor in the rebuilt Shadyac ALSAC Tower north 1st floor lobby is done and they are really spectacular. The custom terrazzo has pieces of blue and green glass and pieces of seashell. Really neat but a construction pain. I hope they like it in 2027 because it should start to wear about then.

September 11, 2007 - Pinch District Sewers

We have all heard what flows downhill. The continuing saga of the 160 Shadyac Building sewer drain is amusing now that it is almost solved. Sewer drain lines flow downhill. They flow all the way to City sewer taps into the city sewer system. This is anything but a high tech network which we ignore unless we have a week like the last. As we left the saga, the 160 drains were found to be broken under the building in two places. Right under new carpet and furniture. Shame on us for not finding this sooner. It turns out a product exists that installs a plastic sleeve inside existing pipe. We spent last week quoting the product and it looked like a good solution. To say we had mixed opinions on the outcome would be an understatement, so we decided to dig a new sewer line over the weekend. Yea! So we start digging and late Saturday run into the new fire water line at the same elevation as the new drain line. Booo! So now we have to move the fire water line to get the right fall (slope). Dropping under the fire water line meant we could not hit the city sewer tap at the right elevation. Double Boooo! So moving the fire water line becomes impossible over the weekend. Monday comes and no sewer. Bad! Now on Monday we challenge the plumber to make sure his pipe fall calculations and slope survey is correct. Turns out we had the right fall all along and could go under the fire water line and make the tap with an inch or so to spare. Yea! So Monday at lunch we have 75 feet to dig and lay pipe and be done. Yea! You know what is coming, has not rained for 5 months and yes it opened up on an open 2 foot ditch. Fillled it to the brim. Boooooooo! Got a pump and finished the pipe late Monday night. Yea! Flush away. My apologies again to the new Building X occupants.

August 31, 2007 - We Have a Big Problem

The construction world just keeps bumping along. Just when you are having a good day working with art programs and audiovisual subcontractors you get a phone call. The call usually starts off, "we have a big problem ...." So today is the day before a three day weekend and we start backing up toilets in the brand new renovated 160 building. It really looks great. It is really going to look great again, after we dig up 14 feet of the floor and run a new sanitary drain line outside because the existing line is broken in two places. It flows water fine, but start flushing toilets and well bring on the porta potties. It just is not fair some times. It really is not fair to these fine people we just gave new wonderful accommodations and then we line up hourly shuttle buses to drive them for bathroom breaks. This happened in the last building we renovated. The occupants had to know when they sold us the building the roof was so rotten that you would fall through if you walked in certain locations. When we checked the roof, we not only had to replace the roofing system, we had to replace almost all the metal decking holding up the roof. Hope I do not hear any more "we have a big problem ..." calls today.

The Shadyac ALSAC tower north lobby will reopen September 17, 2007. The contractor is grinding down the terrazzo floors and plans to be done next Thursday. The electrical sub and ceiling subs will then come in on the new floors and finish their ceiling work. Terrazzo floor work is just down right nasty work. The sub mixes up a batch of what looks like cement and pours it out in a layer on the ground. Our terrazzo has little pieces of green and blue glass with seashell mixed in. Then they start grinding and grinding and grinding with big machines and little machines and hand grinders in the corners. What a total mess. In the end the floors will look really nice, but I am now convinced architects like to specify the hardest thing there is possible to build. Whatever will be the hardest to find, procure and build in the tightest most traveled spot is what we need to have. Terrazzo floors, round circular sheetrock clouds dropping down from the ceilings, cold cathode tube lights rapping these twelve to fourteen foot clouds. Nine and a half feet tall digital image plastic composite panels backlit from more cold cathode lighting. This is going to look really nice, but in one of our busiest elevator lobbies in the summer? September 17, 2007 be there, my nightmare will be over.

August 24, 2007 - Look Into the Future

Updating where we are with the Chili's Care Center is really painful for me to do. The projected moved dates had to be shifted back six weeks. Primarily that had to do with the very slow progress building the south elevator tower. You see the glass finishing up on the outside of the tower. On the inside we have five elevators to open out of the eight that might some day be installed. There are three patient transport elevators the guts of which run right now under the control of the elevator sub. At least he can go up and down on them. The rest of us are hoofing it up the stairs or waiting for the one elevator on the north side. I am told we should see these three elevators in service so I can ride in them by the third week in September. That leaves two more elevators to complete. These elevators are under construction now. They will provide the support service and patient stretcher capability. We have been told these will be done the first week of October. The cynic would say which year. This is the scheduled completion date I really wish I had in my hand.

We are making some progress. We have a functioning CT Simulator from Siemens. We will receive the linear accelerators form Siemens on Sunday and Monday ... this Sunday and Monday. We might even have water in our new fish tank the end of next week. No fish, Just water circulating.

Inside the building we are trying to finish the sheetrock ceiling work around the skylights so we can remove a very large scaffold system and install the interior glass. It seems the lobby will be the last item to complete.

The 2nd floor bridge structure is complete. Piping work across the bridge is to start Monday. I have asked for and expect to know when we will tie the building into the PCC. I expect that date Monday as well.

The new walkway canopy we call the colonnade is being constructed now on the south and west sides of the building. This will be the main walkway entrance from the new parking garage and parking to the west.

In the Kay Kafe project, we started the terrazzo floor work of the ALSAC Shadyac Tower north lobby on Wednesday. They say they need 10 days to finish. All the new bathroom fixtures are complete in the two new bathrooms. These should finish with the flooring. I really hope to have this elevator lobby back in service in 2 weeks. Yes in 2007.

If you park on the west side of the TTU you notice we took about 300 parking spaces to build the street and sidewalk section of the new internal drive. Some of this parking will be lost forever as we build an internal road that will connect the Overton gate to North Parkway. This section of road work should take about six weeks. When North Parkway is closed some time in 2007, we can drive internal to our campus from Lauderdale down the south drive to St. Jude Place out to the closed North Parkway to this new road through the parking area to the Overton gate. A significant part of this contract involves landscaping elements that will radically change the look of the campus. We will be drawn outside to take a stroll around the grounds. At least when it is not 101 degrees, we will be drawn outside to walk around.

August 20, 2007 - Building X Adventures

So you want to open a new building? In Memphis? In the summer? You really need many friends. We are opening the new 160 Shadyac Avenue also known as building X on Monday. This property was purchased for our use about 18 months ago. The previous owner vacated right before Christmas last year. So we started planning this new building to consolidate software developers into really nice space. The space is really going to be nice, but the last two weeks have been normal, crazy, hot, Memphis summertime fun with construction.

The first rule of opening a new building in Memphis in the summer is to pick a date in advance and get a contractor who is under obligation to complete the job no matter what on that date. No matter what, always seems to describe the work of the last two weeks. We hire a general contractor who hires electricians, plumbers, sheet metal installers, sheet rock installers, painters, door hardware installers, steel fabricators, window installers, carpet installers, tile installers, ceiling installers, fire alarm system startup specialists etc. Since we do not think this is enough confusion we as the owners contract with data cable installers and furniture installers. Now everyone knows the completion date for the project and when the date is say six weeks out, work seems to proceed at a somewhat steady pace. As the project nears two weeks to go, every sub is not done and is in the same space at the same time. In construction this is "working on top of each other" and that is exactly what happened the last two weeks. Throw in the air conditioning had spells where it worked and then days when it did not. Picture 100 people in a 10,000 square foot building trying to do their part of construction. They are all mad because someone is in their way. Then picture it at around 95 degrees without air conditioning.

So then we show up with a furniture crew to install 65 workstations in less than two weeks. Sixty five workstations means at least two tractor rigs full of boxes that have to come into the building be unboxed, spread out, put together and all the debris removed. Around 100 of their now closest friends. In 95 degree heat.

So the last week comes and our sole focus is one signature from the code enforcement professional issuing us what is called a temporary certificate of use and occupancy. Temporary U&O. To get that one signature we have to have signatures from the mechanical inspector, plumbing inspector, electrical inspector and fire marshal. These inspections are called for and passed (or failed) by the sub contractors hired by the general contractor. The inspectors do not talk to the owners and the contractors really do not like us around the inspections, but we have to when there is a deadline. Each of these subs knows the few things that can not be complete which are out of their control. These they protect as huge secrets so if they fail an inspection they are not at fault for holding up a project. So as the owner, we have to find all these secrets and pound out a solution to get the one golden signature. In 95 degree heat when tempers are very high. Following this? This is when you need friends.

The 100 people working in this building are not the owners of their companies, they are hard working construction people trying to make a living. Many work all the time. I mean some of these people have been working 12 to 16 hours a day for the entire summer. They work every weekend. They install carpet at night while a business is closed and then go to another project and work all day. Then they do it again the next night. And we pile them all on top of each other to open the building on time.

So we received the mechanical and plumbing signatures on Wednesday. We received the fire marshal inspection on Thursday. So the final signature before the golden one was the electrical inspector which we could not receive Thursday because 3 outlets had not been wired up in the entrance reception counter millwork. This is again where you needs friends. Since we are St. Jude, the electrical inspector agreed to come back the next day at noon which he definetly did not have to do. They insist on 24 hour notification for inspections. If you fail one, you wait to call in the next day so they can come out the following day. We failed because of 3 outlets. This was not the electricians fault, because the holes for the outlets had not been routed in the casework by the casework sub. Kind of get the picture, we missed that one secret. So the electrical inspector came back and signed the next day.

Now for the golden signature, the temporary U&O. We are supposed to have all the other signatures before calling in for this final inspection. This usually means two days later. It is Friday and we do not have two days. Nice to have friends, because the building inspector came by at 3PM on Friday and signed the temporary U&O. Now I have been doing this for twenty years and every project is the same. They all go down to the wire, because the 100 workers are only working on the projects with critical dates. The way of construction in Memphis especially in the summer.

So I am taking time writing this blog on Saturday as we get ready for the move in Monday. Our furniture installers are completing the cubicles. They will finish office furniture Monday and Tuesday. The painters are putting on the last coat of paint on most of the walls. A few walls will be Painted next week. The ceiling installers are putting in ceiling tiles. Clean up crews are trying to straighten up. Our cleaning groups are scheduled tonight and tomorrow. We are installing paper dispensers in the bathrooms. The carpet guys are installing carpet base. Two of the 3 conference rooms are done but none has furniture yet. There is some tile missing in a doorway near this conference room. The sub says someone walked off with a few boxes of tile and he had to order more. We are installing signage in the entry lobby early next week. The front door is temporary until the new one arrives. The bathroom counter tops are temporary until we can install the new tops that arrived yesterday. Way too hot to put in the landscaping. We still need to fix the parking lot. There is a short list of items not ready, but it is a short list. Construction in Memphis in the summer.

Someone asked me why not delay the move a week to give everyone time to finish. That just would have meant the week we spent this week would have been postponed to next week. The week would have looked the same. I have to thank the 100 guys who worked 12 to 16 hours a day in the heat to make this happen. You need a lot of friends.

July 25, 2007 - Progress, Fish and Cabling

We are in the home stretch on so many projects I am just having too much fun to write. The Chili's Care Center project is just going to be so very wonderful. It will represent something like a 20% increase in the campus square footage. The building is very large. There are very impressive public lobby spaces that dramatically utilize natural light. The promised 1000 gallon fish tank is even approaching reality. We might even have fish occupants in the building before people. Fish .. People People... Fish. I think the fish have to win so the tanks are conditioned and look impressive when we occupy. The laboratory final customized features are in progress to support the new occupants. Pharmaceutical Sciences will occupy most of the fifth floor laboratories.

The Virology Department from Infectious Diseases will occupy the north half of the 6th floor. Both groups have some lab customization required for their specific research that is now in progress to support the moves in October and November. The Diagnostic Imaging and Radiation Oncology equipment is supposed to start installing next Tuesday. We will see if that really happens. We want to install the new Siemens CT Simulator in the plaza level room next week, but as of now the construction work is not fit for occupancy. They say it will look much better by Friday. With the army they have working we could build a house in a week like Home Improvement, but the direction and will needs to be there to make the date.

Everything that can be built can at some time fly apart. Most people do not realize that the highest level of equipment failures occur right after construction. If something is not built properly which happens more often than people think, the equipment that should last 30 years falls apart in months. Yesterday afternoon we had a major fan failure on one of the three cooling tower cells that had only been running for a few months providing temporary cooling for the building. These failures happen on every project but they really ruin a nice sunny day.

We are in the middle of a battle to reopen the Shadyac Tower North first floor elevator lobby. Believe it or not, I am still receiving critical design information required to put this back together. In a previous blog I wrote about the expectation to have to fix the sins of twenty years of construction in the area. Well there were some real sinners in the ceiling over the past decade. The ceiling looked like a cable forest. Few items were tied to the building structure as required by code. It was even a challenge trying to find out what the cables served. We came within a few hours of cutting the cables serving the dictation machines. No one knew what the bundle of cables served and the first answer was the cables had been replaced years ago and were legacy junk. Wrong! We are pressing very hard to have this area back in service by the second week of August.....2007.

We are in the home stretch with the 160 Shadyac Avenue new home for Enterprise Informatics folks. It is really going to be a very sharp place to work. I hope the new occupants like it. We have set a move date in August and plan to make it. The furniture is set to arrive just in time the first and second week in August.

In our spare time we are relocating every person in the ALSAC Headquarters building one group at a time for 21 straight weeks. Yawn... Yawn.. Yawn. Piece of cake. I hope you can tell when I am trying to joke. At the end of 21 weeks I hope the team is still talking to each other. This is a real challenge. Adding new carpet to every phase really made the job a pleasant experience for all. Keeping all the groups operational except for perhaps two to four days of interruption per group is a real coordination feat. I am proud of the progress to date.

July 7, 2007 - Water, Water Everywhere

When you start talking about water, sometimes it's a good story. Today, the new Chili's Care Center fish tank was set in place. It will hold almost 1000 gallons of water and will have a live camera to watch the fish. I understand if we post this to a web site it might generate 50,000 hits a day. These are the numbers coming from the reef tank experts. Not only are we building a fish tank, we are adding a real coral sea. Sometimes when you talk about water it can be bad news. For example, a welder's sparks find their way into some cardboard boxes in a warehouse. As a result, a fire starts and three sprinkler heads discharge for about an hour. Since a sprinkler head flows about 15 gallons a minute, we calculate the fire in our warehouse this week flowed 3000 gallons. Fortunately, it worked well and put out the fire (with help from the Memphis Fire Department.) The institutional response was very good and our initial grave concerns for damage were not realized. In a contained fire, the water does more property damage than the fire. One hint for the next life safety training test, an actual drill, or a real fire, if you see a fire pull a pull station and then call 3499 to report the fire to the PBX.

We are having an extremely hard time installing the new roofs for the Kay Kafe and the last portion of the Chili's Care Center. On the Chili's Care Center, the contractor was about 30% done and let an afternoon storm destroy the work (as I wrote in a previous blog.) Now the threat of an afternoon storm is enough to send the crews elsewhere. Construction is such a different way of life. Contractors have real leverage on job performance by simply refusing to perform. All the owner has is the right not to pay. The frustration levels get very high over what seems like childish disputes. Another good one that always comes up near the end of jobs is who is going to pay for damage to subcontractor A work done by subcontractor B, C, D, etc. We pay for a new building and expect everything to look like new when we are done. If a subcontractor A builds a wall and it is done and everyone knows it was done and someone knocks a hole in it by accident or otherwise, then subcontractor A has to fix it. The other party is usually unknown like the guy/gal who dents cars in parking lots. Subcontractor A wants money to fix the wall dented by the rascal who escaped notice. The owner will not pay, because we wanted new looking walls when the job is over, not sometime during the job. Subcontractor A can simply refuse to fix the work and this often happens. The childish arguments over this situation near the end of jobs test your patience. Near the end of the job every contractor has some woe is me story about the rascals who must be the same ones who dent our cars in the parking lots.

June 22, 2007 - A Construction Snapshot

What I am thinking? What am I thinking? Moving the teller machines on pay day. What am I thinking? The airport might have busier teller machines than ours, but it would be a close race. Did you know we have one of the higher volume teller machines in the city? I decided it would be a good idea to move it on payday. What am I thinking?

Speaking of great ideas, we have been looking a drawings remodeling the Shadyac ALSAC Tower north elevator lobby as part of the Kay Kafe project for over three years now in one form or another. Every time an architect showed me a new plan the detail grew and grew. I kept seeing construction barriers closing the lobby longer and longer. I would rather go to the dentist and pull teeth. The time is right now. Sunday at 3PM you will not be able to walk from the DTRC to the PCC by the cafeteria. Until August. I am not kidding. The architects designing these renovations did not really understand our pain. We have to perform the project now to connect to the Chili's Care Center right now with no more delays. The three year time for talking is over. It's time for the pain. We have to move the teller machines (on pay day), Starbucks, vending machines, stamp machines, reprogram the elevators not to stop on the 1st floor, change exit signage, remove glass to make another cafeteria exit, knock down most of the existing walls, remove the existing ceiling and lights, and find every loose end and short cut construction has taken since 1973 that we do not know about yet. In the end we will have a really cool new space with new larger bathrooms and LCD information displays. Starbucks will be in the DTRC lobby as soon as I can get a water test back proving we reconnected the filter unit correctly. The vending machines will be in the cafeteria (what is left of it). The stamp machines I have yet to figure out.

Did you see the really big crane come and take down the really big tower crane this week. No more tower cranes. No more crane inspections. Looking around Memphis, this might be the first time in some time we do not have a tower crane at work. they had to pull the tower crane section out of the elevator shaft so we can close up the roof. Cool.

June 20, 2007 - Commercial Roofing 101

Seems there is a really big guy here on campus that wants me to update the blog. He is bigger than me, so here goes...

You ever get into things far more than you ever really wanted to? Roofs. I know more about roofs than an electrical engineer should ever want to know. I know more than I ever wanted to know, because we catch roofers acting badly and I have to listen to the sad story. Before I started with roofs, I knew the water was supposed to stay on the top side. Water is not supposed to be under the roof membrane. That is called a bad roof. When you put a roof membrane on metal decking you know real quick if you have a roof leak. Metal decking does not hold water. Most of our roofs are poured concrete that we top with insulation board and then top with a roof membrane. A leak on a concrete roof will run under the insulation the length of the concrete until it reaches a hole, crack, etc. You never know where the leak is when it shows up over your desk. When a contractor installs a new roof, they are not to allow water to soak the insulation board. Wet insulation on a concrete roof stays trapped for long periods of time and ruins the effectiveness of the insulation. So we are installing the new roof over the wedge of the chili's Care Center and guess what happened yesterday? It rained. The roof insulation was soaked and we caught it. The roofer had to remove the wet insulation. A very long sad story of a meeting. The real crime is we told them it was going to rain and asked them to protect the roof on Monday and they did not. I want to say our catching this incident did not make a difference and the wet roof would have been replaced anyway. That is what I would like to think.

The 305 expansion is done on time and under budget. One slight little problem... There is not any furniture yet. We are just starting a program to remove ALSAC furniture in phases and replace it with higher density systems to make room for more ALSAC employees. This will be a 19 phase program involving removing furniture, replacing carpet, installing new furniture, installing new power and data connections and moving back in. We are going to use some of the existing ALSAC furniture in the 305 expansion and save $250,000. so the big empty area we finished should be ready for new occupants by the end of August.

We are working very hard to build out the 160 North Parkway site. The street is actually being changed to Shadyac Avenue so the address of the new home to roughly 60 computer programmers will be 160 Shadyac Avenue. We have completely fenced the block and improved the landscaping. We should have complete security control of the block by the end of next week. Inside the building, the contractors have completed significant portions of ductwork, wall framing and plumbing rough in work for the new bathrooms. We have pulled the fiber optic cable for data connectivity from the cGMP. We hope to have the building ready for furniture by the end of August if not sooner.

I will write more again sooner. He is bigger than me.

May 30, 2007 - Punchlists, Steam and Ice Cream

Sorry for the long, long, gap in entries. Among other things, I took a cruise with my wife and in laws. I had to go as I am the porter. The one item I do well is lift heavy objects. Strong back...weak mind.

The Chili's Care Center is humming along with upwards of five hundred contractors on site on any given day. Seems to work out that there are 500 on Monday and Tuesday and it falls off on Friday, just like most workplaces. We hit a very large milestone this week. We actually had the architect out to perform a punchlist of the 3rd floor office space. Let me describe what a punchlist really means. It is supposed to be the architects final check that the documents were accurately built. The punch list is developed to itemize those blemishes to the architects perfect documents. What it ends up being is the architect and contractor walking around looking at walls, doors, ceiling etc looking literally for blemishes that are to be fixed. Now if these architects and contractors walked next to an entire suite of receptacles that did not have power, or ductwork that was not connected, they would never know. They trust reports written by other subcontractors for those important items (which can easily be fabricated by someone filling in numbers on a spreadsheet). The whole punchlist process can be a real joke if the owner does not watch out. If you have ever built a house you know quality control is really ultimately on the owners head. The contractor wants to do as little as possible to get the final pay check. So by the end of the week I will have a list of the scuff marks to be painted over on the 3rd floor. This is progress I guess. We will do the same thing on June 18th for the 2nd, 5th and 6th floors. This time the architect will bring the mechanical and electrical engineers to start developing a punch list for the building systems on the 2nd through 6th floors.

Most of the current Chili's Care Center work is happening in the wedge piece of the project and the 1st floor and 2nd floor connectors to the existing campus. The skylights in the wedge have been installed and the roofing is to start next week. The precast walls are being installed finally on the east side of the building with windows to quickly follow. It really should look like a finished building from the outside by the first part of July. The inside is nice and cool. The air conditioning works really well. The boilers are producing steam we need for temperature control reheat. That is an interesting process. Say it is 90 degrees outside and 80% humidity. It is coming we all know that. The building mechanical systems take this air and cools it to 55 degrees through large air handling systems and chilled water piping coils. This temperature drop removes large amounts of moisture from the air that runs in streams down the drain. The 55 degree air has about 100% humidity so it either has to be mixed with some return air or it has to be heated up with steam converted to hot water through coils in each work space to make sure the area you are in is roughly 72 degrees. Ever wonder why it seems so cold in buildings in the summer? It is because the air was cooled to 55 degrees to get rid of the Memphis humidity and was not correctly heated up to be comfortable. Moral of the story is we use steam when it is hot and humid. Can not live without it.

See the steel for the 1st floor connector? I hope we can hide it with precast panels and windows by the second week in June. We can walk over to the new building now down the tunnel in the plaza level, but the first floor connector and corridor are several weeks away.

The Kay Kafe project roof is going to be installed at the same time of the Chili's Care Center Tower roof. It was not really ever in the schedule that way, but that is the way it is now working out. Getting both projects in the dry is the next real milestone.

We are making several design changes in the new cafeteria lobby aimed to make the space more fun. We are actually going to go to an ice cream store near you and take pictures of the tops of ice cream scoops...real ice cream scoops! We are going to take the digital images of these many colored and caloried (Spell check says caloried is not a word, but I am an engineer and that never stopped me before.) ice cream scoops and are going to make a digital matrix of said ice cream scoops into a sort of wallpaper that will be printed and set into plastic sandwich panels attached to the walls floor to ceiling around the new pizza/ice cream bar. I am not kidding, how could I make this stuff up. What should be more fun for a pizza/ice cream bar than a polka dot pattern of ice cream scoops? This design team is going to need some help with the calories.

North Parkway update: The contractor still says it will be 4 to 6 weeks before North Parkway will be closed at Danny Thomas Boulevard. Eight weeks ago they said 4 to 6 weeks. Eight weeks from now they may say 4 to 6 weeks, but what I do know is some day I will be happily driving west down North Parkway and will have to find my way around to 3rd street to come back up North Parkway from the west. I just know I will be late for a meeting. More updates to come. Are these not really useful?

May 4, 2007 - Cyclotron Confounds Contractors

Sorry for the absence of entries. It has been hard to write and be positive and fun when not everything in life is positive and fun. Not something I really want to go into and not a period of time I ever want to repeat.

What has become very clear to me lately are the abundance of positive things happening around campus. Is it just me, or does the outside interest in what happens at St. Jude through tours and visits appear to have tripled? I have had the pleasure to meet and talk with several very dedicated fundraising groups lately. There are at least a million people out their volunteering and raising money to make St. Jude what it is. Wow! These groups make change possible and there is a tremendous amount of change occurring.

We poured the roof slab on the Kay Kafe yesterday and should have a finished roof on the building in a few weeks. The new dining room should come together some time in July, but the temporary eating facilities will continue for some time as we finish the kitchen and servery areas. The new Kay Kafe entry area design has been improved and we are racing to incorporate the new looks into the design documents in time for the construction activities. It is very hard to make a design change while a construction project is already under way. For the rest of the project we have to make sure each and every trade is working from the correct set of drawings. When drawings are issued, they are copied countless times by unknown numbers of dedicated well-meaning assistants. That does not mean anyone is copying the correct drawings or building the wall or ceiling in the right place. Drawing change busts can show up years after the change was made. I wish I could say we would never change a drawing after it was issued and we would get all the information we need to work up front. Right it is never going to happen! So we have to have too many coordination meetings. I am sure some of you feel that way in your field.

We are working hard on the Building X site across from the bus station. This will house about 60 software developers in nice space. Currently we are installing an ornamental metal fence around the site to keep the copper bandits out. The building has already been gutted and construction should start in the next few weeks. If you drive by you might have noticed some landscaping we relocated from the Auction Avenue widening effort. That line of trees was in the way of progress and will make this new addition to our campus look more inviting.

The Chili's Care Center cyclotron was lowered into the underground vault on the north side of the building two weeks ago. There is a crew from Italy working in what we call the hot lab installing what are called hot cells that house the chemical processing equipment that prepares isotope doses made in the cyclotron vault. Think of a very large stainless steel industrial kitchen and you get a close approximation to the look. Look inside a hot cell and they are mostly lead bricks. Tons of led bricks to keep the radiation from harming the radiation chemistry technicians. This has been a large milestone to reach for close to a year. The crew setting up the cyclotron will be here from Belgium next week and will be here for some weeks to make this work. I for one am going to take their word for it that it works. I cannot begin to explain how amusing it has been watching our local construction crews try to figure out what this stuff could possibly do. This equipment might as well be a spaceship. This is a once in a lifetime installation for everyone involved.

I am typing this blog at 8:00 p.m. waiting for another of my bright ideas to come to a close for the night. We found a way to utilize the new 505 data center vault to power the ALSAC Headquarters Building. The new vault sources from the new substation over on Avery Street with complete underground wiring. No more windstorm, ice, or bad driver holidays for ALSAC. The added load actually helps stabilize the 505 data center as transformers work better with some load. The 505 data center was sized for 10 years of growth, but the load now is barely enough to keep the transformers online. (Like running a Porsche in a 5 mile speed limit or through one of our parking garages.) Unfortunately we picked the weekend that monster rains would come right as we had pulled all the old power out and drove the old transformer away. Picture this ALSAC went home yesterday at 2:00 p.m. and have a holiday today. ( I have many ALSAC friends now.) I am soaking wet because I have to make sure the electricians we hired stay and finish the work in the rain and tornado warning. There is no power to the ALSAC building except the small amount from the emergency generator. I did kind of promise they could come back to work Monday morning. So far so good. I may be wet, but I am not as muddy as these wonderful electricians. I better check to make sure they did not leave.

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