VCU Health Adult Outpatient Pavilion

The project needed to fold 26 care programs, including the Massey Cancer Center, into a single structure on a confined brownfield urban site.

The facility’s structural grid had to accommodate diverse spatial requirements and specialized equipment on elevated floors. Providing access to natural light for cancer treatment areas while maintaining ground-level efficient patient drop-off and valet operations was also a priority.

The site’s steep slope created challenges due to unbalanced soil loads, differing foundation bearing elevations, parking levels, and ensuring efficient drainage along the site.

Impending steel tariffs that threatened to raise the project’s cost, creating short timelines for us to design and procure materials and to capture cost savings.

We developed a digital workflow to place new foundations around existing ones and identify best-fit connections between the building’s hybrid concrete and steel structural systems.

We leveraged our workflow and engineering expertise to economically achieve the sawtooth facade design with a unitized curtain wall system. Our team designed a first-of-its-kind elevated composite steel and concrete LINAC vault capable of supporting the required eight-foot-thick shielding. This approach allowed treatment spaces to access natural light while freeing ground-level space for patient entry, and connectivity, and a centralized valet drop-off. 

Combining our accurate structural BIM and advanced traffic and pedestrian modeling tools, we developed an innovative parking solution, providing patients with direct access at multiple levels, and supporting an efficient valet and drop-off operation. 

Walter P Moore issued steel structural for early procurement before schematic design was complete and used our proprietary digital process to manage and communicate the impact of subsequent design changes, avoiding surprises and minimizing risk. 

The Adult Outpatient Pavilion provides an industry-leading care experience for patients and the Greater Richmond community while also solidifying VCU Health’s status as one of the best healthcare institutions and academic medical systems in the state.

Our engineering solutions helped provide patient care facilities with ample daylight while also housing VCU’s MRI-Linac system, which is one of only a few dozen in use worldwide.

The new facility boasts better patient comfort, improved accessibility, and a convenient parking facility containing over 1100 parking spaces.

Our pre-emptive planning and targeted solutions saved nearly $600,000 in costs, prevented VCU from absorbing higher prices due to steel tariffs, and cut four months from the construction schedule.