Best of the Best: Layton Construction's Farmington Health Center is named the nation's top 2017 healthcare building project based on its teamwork, safety, problems solving, innovation and quality

Engineering News-Record (ENR), a leading construction industry weekly publication, has named Layton Construction’s Farmington Health Center as its Best of the Best Healthcare Project for 2017.

The award is a significant honor for the company. 

According to the magazine, “Every year, ENR invites construction teams from around the country to submit their best work to its regional Best Projects competitions, where it is judged on teamwork, safety, problem-solving, innovation and quality. This year, nearly 700 construction industry project teams submitted entries to one of our 10 regions. During the year-long winnowing process, ENR editors assembled panels of industry experts to identify the regional winners within the 20 project categories. Then, category winners in each region competed against each other for national honors.”

“That’s a pretty singular honor,” said Alan Rindlisbacher, director of corporate communications at Layton. “It surely wasn’t the biggest health- care project built, including some of ours in other regions that didn’t make the initial cut, but was deemed the winner because of its complexity, success and contributions to the industry and the community it serves.”

The Farmington facility was built by Layton for the University of Utah Health system of hospitals and clinics. Dixon & Associates was the lead design firm, Psomas did the civil engineering and BHB Engineers handled structural engineering. The mechanical contractor was Western States Mechanical while the electrical installation was done by Copper Mountain Electric. 

Other subcontractors included City Glass and Construction Service Inc., Gerdau Reinforcing Steel, Golder Acoustics Inc., Great Western Landscape, Green Construction Inc., H&H Fireproofing Inc., Hayward Baker Inc., IMS Masonry Inc., Masterpiece Commercial Millwork, Pete King Construction Co. and Superior Roofing and Sheet Metal Inc. 

“The design-build team that completed the 130,000-square-foot project in less than 14 months was driven by the community’s need for a world-class medical clinic, one that offers primary, specialty and urgent-care services under one roof,” ENR said in its release announcing the award. “FHC houses dozens of medical departments and includes a full-service pharmacy, in-house branches of the Huntsman Cancer Institute and Moran Eye Center, a café and large conference room.”

Before the $45-million center was completed, people who sought medical care through the University of Utah system had to travel south to the main campus in Salt Lake City. With the clinic’s completion, patients from the Farmington area can address a variety of medical needs in one building.

“It’s a complicated building, one step away from being a full-service hospital,” said David Dixon, principal architect with Dixon & Associates. “Designing the multiple treatment centers, options and specialties wasn’t easy, but it all came together in the end.”

The project team sought input from more than 40 different medical departments and specialties. “Completing a design-build project is challenging at best, and especially with so many stakeholders — including the state, the university, Huntsman Cancer and a diverse group of healthcare providers,” said Duane Palmer, administrative director of clinic operations at University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics. “It’s highly unusual to find this type of project and its complexity built as a design-build.”

The job moved so quickly that at times construction in the field came close to passing the progress of the design, the developers said. “It helped that the university knew exactly what it wanted and we could get everyone, including the trades, on board early to deliver that as a unified team,” said Jeremy Hobbs, construction manager for Layton.

Patient-centered innovations include a central atrium with easy access to pods that contain up to a dozen exam and procedure rooms, labs and restrooms. The pods have dual entrances for patients and medical providers, Dixon said. The facility includes a protected corridor with a skylight in the linear-accelerator area used for cancer treatment. Patients can enter through glass doors with natural light and plants that help reduce anxiety.

Project challenges included a high water table at the site that required drilling more than 300 aggregate piers to resolve poor soil conditions. At nearly 70 percent completion, Farmington was hit by a storm that pushed 100-mile-per-hour winds across the jobsite, causing more than $100,000 of damage to the roof, exterior glass and aluminum curtain wall, along with other components. Nearly all exposed insulation was torn from the building.

Layton began a month-long cleanup, not only at the jobsite but also in the surrounding community. The contracting team brought in crews from as far away as Florida, worked seven days a week, including holidays, and re-sequenced work to get back on schedule. “If our subcontractor base hadn’t reacted so quickly and helped out, we couldn’t have met the schedule after that storm,” Hobbs said. 

The project peaked at 225 people on the jobsite for several weeks said Hobbs. Crews worked 62,232 worker-hours with no OSHA-recordable incidents or lost-time accidents. 

Now, more than 60 health care providers and 150 staff work at the facility and at full capacity it will employ 400. The building sits on 10 acres, with additional land set aside for future expansion of the medical campus.