Turner Construction Company is leading the way in which we address the critical needs of building healthcare facilities that prioritize resilience, functionality, safety and sustainability.
Turner's recent head of Turner, a Massachusetts General Hospital, has now been able to integrate sustainability and resilience into healthcare construction to address the challenges posed by climate risks. It demonstrates whether there is.
Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Philip and Susan Lagonville in Boston illustrate the design and construction of resilient, sustainable healthcare. This 1.9 million square foot redevelopment, a collaboration between the Turner and Walsh brothers, is built to enhance operational resilience while meeting Boston's ambitious 2050 carbon reduction targets. Turner's pre-construction team played a pivotal role in driving implementation solutions to implement design strategies, assess costs, and ensure long-term resilience of the project and adoption for energy transition.
Brian Chase, Vice President and Construction Executive at Turner, MGH Project, said: “It is essential to properly manage the design and construction of resilience elements for new healthcare facilities to minimize these impacts.”
Project features include:
•Climate Response System: Wind-resistant design and flood barriers to reduce risk from bad weather.
•Resilient infrastructure: systems adapting to enhance functionality and safety through large-scale risk assessments. This includes a design that operates as a “96-hour island” under the shelter regulations, ensuring continuous operation in emergencies.
• Sustainability integration: 90% reduction in emissions compared to baseline codebuilding.
Building on these sustainability efforts, MGH is also setting new benchmarks to reduce operational carbon emissions in energy-intensive healthcare facilities. Amid the push to decarbonize the environment in which Boston was built, Ragon buildings show the potential for significant carbon emission reductions with minimal first-cost investments.
Healthcare buildings, especially in cold climates like Boston, face unique energy challenges, as they require large amounts of outside air to be warmed or dehumidified before entering the facility. Turner and the Design Team (Mechanical Engineer BR+A) have designed an innovative heat pump configuration that extracts energy from the warm exhaust air of a building, reheating and reheating via water to water heat. This issue was addressed. pump.
BR+A's energy recovery approach:
This “exhaust source heat pump” is about 20% of the size of the building's peak heating load, but since the building operates in part-load conditions for most of the year, it reduces emissions by almost 90%. By targeting most of the opening hours rather than designing rare peaks, the team maximized the carbon emissions cutoff potential. This high-performance strategic approach avoids unnecessary costs associated with overdesigning peak conditions and provides significant environmental and financial returns.
One of the few general contractors who have experienced implementing such advanced systems, Turner continues to utilize this technology in the life sciences and healthcare industries in both new projects and renovations of existing buildings.
“At Turner, we understand that sustainable healthcare design and construction is more than just weather-resistant buildings. Peter Hamill, Senior Vice President and Project Principal at Turner, said: “These projects illustrate how collaboration and innovation can create facilities that address climate challenges and provide solutions that impact the long-term operational life of healthcare projects. It is a project like this that will help pave the way for a sustainable future.”
