To view pdf version click hereWhen the new Cape Coral Veterans Administration (VA) Outpatient Clinic opens in spring 2012, military personnel and retirees on the Gulf Coast will be able to utilize a conveniently located, state-of-the-art facility for medical care and other services. As a key player on the con- struction team, B & I Contractors, Inc. in Fort Myers can take credit for the project’s complex plumbing and mechanical aspects.
“Everyone from our plumbers, pipefitters, and tin-knockers worked hand in hand with the general contractor and other subs to make this project a success,” said Vincent Cicchesi, supervisor/estimator, plumbing service & special projects, B & I Contractors, in an interview with Florida Plumbing Per- spective. Manhattan Construction (Florida), Inc., formerly Manhattan Kraft Construction in Naples, was the general con- tractor for the $53 million project.
Established in 1960, B & I Contractors specializes in com- mercial, institutional, and industrial construction with services that include HVAC, plumbing, pipefitting, sheet metal, electri- cal, and fire protection service. “This was a very significant project for the Gulf Coast,” said project manager Ashley Fernandez, B.S.M.E. “There were also a number of interest features about the job that point to where the Florida plumb- ing market is heading.”
PROJECT IMPACT
The new Cape Coral VA Outpatient Clinic has been an important stimulus to the southwest Florida economy. At the time of the January 2010 groundbreaking, Fred Pezeshkan, president and CEO of Kraft Construction Company, Inc., said about 600 subcontractors and ven- dors for the construction job will be hired from Lee, Charlotte, and Collier coun- ties. A few months later, Bob Koenig, senior vice president and area manager for Kraft Construction, told the Cape Coral Construction Industry Association that 80% of the suppliers and sub-contractors for the project were procured in Lee, Collier, and Charlotte counties.
The new clinic is designed to replace an older veteran’s clinic in Fort Myers that opened in 1979 and no longer has the capacity to meet the growing population of retired U.S. mili- tary personnel. Although there are an estimated 200,000 vet- erans in the region—including 68,000 in Lee County—the older clinic offers only a limited number of services. As a result, veterans who require advanced procedures have had to travel to St. Petersburg for treatment at the Bay Pines VA Healthcare System.
In a 2010 article in the Cape Coral Breeze, Ralph Santillo, founder of the Invest in America’s Veterans Foundation in Cape Coral, said the new clinic may encourage more veter- ans to relocate to the Fort Myers area, knowing about the convenient services. That benefit, plus a great deal of afford- able housing in the region, may help economic recovery process for Fort Myers and Cape Coral.
“We are talking to vets outside the area to relocate down here because we have the facility coming up, and we have a reasonable housing market right now,” he said. Currently, about 25% of the people living in southwest Florida are veter- ans, according to Santillo.
PROJECT SCOPE
The Cape Coral VA Outpatient Clinic is 224,000 square feet, three times the size of the older Fort Myers VA Clinic. The facility will occupy a 30-acre site, stand 89 feet tall, and include 900 parking spots. The building itself is split into two quadrants: a two-story section and a four-story section. Two thousand tons of steel and 26,000 cubic yards of concrete were being used for the clinic, according to a Kraft Con- struction article.
The facility will be a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary spe- cialty care and outpatient clinic offering services such as pri- mary care, mental health care, diagnostic radiology, labora- tory services, audiology, cardiology with cardiac non-invasive diagnostic services, urology, GI, orthopedics, ophthalmology, dermatology, minor surgery, and advanced imaging including CT, MRI, fluoroscopy, ultrasound, nuclear medicine, mam- mography, and vascular Doppler ultrasound. It will include a Women Veterans Healthcare center, serving female veterans on the Gulf Coast.
Faith Belcher, spokesperson for the Bay Pines VA Health- care System in St. Petersburg, the administrator for local vet- eran care, said in a 2010 article that the design of the facility allows for a tower to be constructed with beds and other in- patient services when the need arises. It may also be able to have an emergency room in the future.
B & I Construction was re- sponsible for the mechanical and plumbing scopes, said Fernandez. “The building in- cludes operating rooms (ORs) with their respective recovery rooms, dental surgery rooms, and many office spaces,” he said, noting there were about 100 bathrooms to be installed. “Months of detailed and ex- tensive overhead coordination between the many trades were a critical part of this project.”
PLUMBING
Cicchesi noted that the plumbing scope includes sanitary, domestic water, condensate, medical gas piping, natural gas, and fuel piping. “For the domestic water system we furnished and installed a 30,000-gallon steel underground tank, a fully redundant booster pump package in a fiberglass exterior dog- house, and all interior equipment and plumbing fixtures,” he said.
Another challenging aspect of the project was plumbing for the operating rooms, which have a full welded stainless steel ductwork system with all stainless accessories, as well as a decontamination room for sanitizing surgical scalpels and other instruments.
Cicchesi said the B & I team had to install oversized sen- sor-operated hand-wash sinks for use by the clinic staff prior to entering the OR areas. “These were wall-mounted units, approximately 4.5 feet wide and 3 feet tall, with their own mix- ing valves,” he added.
There were also four water softeners—handling more than 300 gallons—with a 6-inch flow, added Cicchesi. “We handled all the stainless steel welding, piping, and ductwork, while subbing out the low-voltage electrical work.”
MECHANICAL
For B & I Contractors, the mechanical scope included three 350-ton water-cooled chillers, a 35-ton air-cooled chiller, a 70-ton heat recovery chiller, along with 17 air-handling units and 34 fan-coil units.
The mechanical system included ERVs on all air-handling units to recover the energy from the exhaust air. The main makeup water supply to three cooling towers is the conden- sate from the air conditioning units, which are capable of pro- viding 533 gallons per hour of condensate water at peak load. “This facility is 100% drained,” said Cicchesi. “All condensate lines run to one area and recirculate to the cooling tower.”
The heating hot water system is fed by three 2500-MBH boilers, which provide heat to more than 350 variable air vol- ume units with heating coils to control room temperature. B & I also handled the natural gas connections to the boilers and water heaters. The fuel system included two 25,000-gallon fiberglass fuel tanks, three generator day tanks, and a fuel oil maintenance system.
“The unique mechanical aspect of this project included a fully louvered generator room, which was made up of large, stackable hurricane-rated louvers,” said Fernandez. “The generator room is located on the second floor level, making this a very complex installation.”
MEDICAL GASES
The VA Outpatient Clinic’s medical gas system included all medical gas equipment, alarm panels, and the installation of 35-owner-supplied head wall units. “One of the biggest chal- lenges on the plumbing scope was the large amount of owner-supplied equipment requiring plumbing connections,” Fernandez said. “Close coordination was required with the owner and general contractor in order to correctly complete the required rough-in.”
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