Mission Bay Hospital Project Wins International Innovation Award

By Kate Vidinsky


A view of UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay, a hospital complex which is currently under construction and will open its doors to women, children and cancer patients in 2015. Photo by Mark Citret

UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay’s design and construction team has received an international award honoring the many innovative approaches being used to create the world-class hospital complex in San Francisco.

The Celebration of Engineering and Technology Innovation — or CETI — Award, recognizes organizations for their significant achievements in innovation and the implementation of new and emerging technologies. The CETI awards are presented each year by Fiatech, an international consortium focused on improving the design, engineering, construction, and maintenance of large capital projects.

“We are so excited to have our hard work recognized in this way,” said Durga Tiwari, a project engineer with DPR Construction, the general contractor for the UCSF hospital project. “I hope this award will help spread the good word about UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay, a project that we all are so passionate about.”

UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay won the 2011 CETI in the Scenario-Based Project Planning category for “proving that integrated project delivery processes, tools and technologies can be successfully applied to a public sector project.” Fiatech applauded the team for reducing construction costs by more than $100 million without reducing the scope of the project.

The UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay project team, from left, Tyler Krehlik, Stantec architect and sustainability expert; Durga Tiwari, DPR project engineer; Ray Trebino, DPR project manager; and Stuart Eckblad, director of UCSF Design and Construction, received the Fiatech 2011 CETI award for engineering and design innovation. Photo by Susan Merrell

“This award is important to us because it is recognition by the industry that our integrated approach has successfully implemented new and emerging technologies into the design and construction process and achieved extraordinary results with respect to our goals,” said Stuart Eckblad, director of design and construction for the UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay.

The CETI award recognized a number of specific innovative practices being used to build the medical center at Mission Bay. Among them is a commitment to lean project management principles in design and construction that enhance collaboration and minimize delays in decision-making. Since May 2009, the highly integrated project team, comprised of more than 100 people from 19 companies, has worked together under one roof in a command center adjacent to the construction site.

The award also acknowledged the extensive virtual design and construction techniques being used at Mission Bay. By creating highly detailed computer models, the team validated the hospital design and assessed construction feasibility before actual construction began to fix any potential problems ahead of time. This resulted in a cost savings of $15 million. This approach also helped the team create a reliable building schedule, and has increased productivity in the field.  

UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay will open in early 2015. A model of innovative and sustainable design, the hospital complex will include a 183-bed children's hospital with urgent/emergency care, primary care and specialty outpatient services; a women's hospital offering cancer care, specialty surgery and a 36-bed birth center; and a 70-bed adult hospital for cancer patients.