By: Mary Pearson

The BARA, A Joint Venture construction site of the future Parkland Hospital aka A Glimpse of Global: Global students see engineering in action ! Every year, DFW Technology and Education Council (DFW TEC) partners with Global High School to expose students to the applications of engineering and technology through industry site visits. Last year, we visited Time Warner Cable, and this year we toured the Parkland hospital construction site in downtown Dallas. DFW TEC is a council that has programs that help K-12th grade students get interested in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). They have summer programs for students and partner with teachers and schools to help get students in North Texas interested in STEM experiences. ! The eld trips that we go on are amazing because we see things that we have learned about in the classroom actually being used in the real world. I think that is the most stimulating part of the eld trips because honestly, who wants to learn something that youll never use? ! The new Parkland hospital, costing over a billion dollars, is being built by a team of construction companies: Balfour Beatty Construction, Austin Commercial, H.J. Russell & Company and Azteca Enterprises. This long list is quite a mouthful, so they just use the acronym BARA. They are working towards earning the LEED silver award, a very high honor bestowed upon green and sustainable projects. To get LEED certied, you obtain credits for the each criterion that is met, and the total credits determine the level you achieve: bronze (40-49 credits), silver (50-59 credits), gold (60-79 credits) or platinum (80+ credits). When the Parkland project is LEED recognized, a plaque will be put on the wall of the building stating its auspicious achievement. ! Our two engineering teachers, April Moon and Scott Warren, and 15 of their high achieving students from Global attended this years site visit. When they arrived, lunch and a free computer mouse was provided. Nothing like free food and electronics to make teenagers from a technology school happy! After we had our ll of pizza, the construction manager and various people from the design team took us on a tour. This part was especially exciting for the students from my Civil Engineering and Architecture class because we saw that the complicated concepts we all pull our hair out over actually have a purpose. ! On the tour, we saw a full size mock up model of the structural frame of a hospital room, which is used to test the materials and experience the layout to see if there is any adjustments needed. There were windows, drywall, and even a door. The site manager read us interesting facts about what has already been built, and you could tell he was very excited about this task. The facts he read were crazy! The reinforcement bar for the concrete they have poured is equal to the weight of 2180 cars, and thats just what has been installed so far! You could tell that everyone on the design and leadership team were enjoying themselves and were very passionate about their jobs. ! We viewed the construction site from the DART platform, a location that allowed us to overlook the whole site. There were huge cranes lifting materials between the nine oors that were already constructed. We could see the progression of oor assemblage with the most nished oors being the lower levels. The majority of our tour group asked

By: Mary Pearson

questions about the concrete, formwork, and construction methods. Im sad to say that we could not stump our tour guides, but that was not from lack of trying. ! We returned to one of the construction site portables for a presentation about Austin Commercial. The presentation was formatted as a Prezi, which greatly excited us because Global High students usually use Prezis for class presentations. We were very delighted to hear that Austin Commercial specializes in green building and was actually named the Top Green Builder of Texas in 2009. We learned about other projects managed by Austin Commercial, which includes the American Airline Center and the downtown Dallas building with a hole in the top. ! The next and last stop of our eld trip was the Virtual Coordinating Modeling (VCM) room. There were three projector screens connected to a single computer, and we had an assortment of professionals disclose their day-to-day experiences of designing the different facets of the hospital. Instead of the conventional bulky blueprints that need transportation just short of a pack mule, most of the designing and editing is now done virtually on computers and even iPads. Portability is only one advantage of using virtual models instead of hand sketches, blueprints, and physical architectural models. Virtual plans also allow multiple designers to work on one le at the same time, revisions are automatically reected and communicated, visual details are enhanced, and clash detection is now possible. We learned that the program they use for designing this billion dollar project is the same software we use in our Civil Engineering and Architecture class: Autodesk Revit. We were very impressed when we saw the structural plans, Mechanical Electrical Plumbing (MEP) plans, and renderings that they created in Revit and how these compared to actual photos. ! The renderings of the hospital were breathtaking. (You can view these at buildingparkland.com). The new rooms are larger than the average hospital room, and they all have private bathrooms, soothing colors, and nooks for visitors/ family. The passageways and lobbies are more open and have lots of natural light. The overall design promotes physical and psychological wellness. There will even be a park right next to the hospital, Putting the park in Parkland, because the latest research shows that nature helps with the healing process. ! The new hospital will have a section that is supported by a massive cantilever beam that spans almost 200 long and stands 30 tall. This unique design is quite an accomplishment for the engineers involved with this nontraditional structural support system. ! This trip was a great opportunity for us. I learned so much about sustainability, construction, virtual modeling, and design. I cannot wait to see what is in store for next year!