Construction Administration, Electrical, Fire Protection/Detection, Mechanical

KJWW provided electrical and mechanical engineering design services for a new 80,000 SF medical office building for Aurora Health Center in Hartford, Wisconsin.

The two-story structure, more than three times the size of the previous clinic, is located adjacent to Aurora Medical Center. The new facility, in addition to offering more space for primary care, allows for new or expanded specialty care including: audiology, cardiology, diabetes educator, dietitian, ENT, family practice, gastroenterology, general surgery, internal medicine, lab and x-ray, neurology, ob/gyn, occupational medicine, ophthalmology, optical and optometry, orthopedics, pediatric and adolescent medicine, vascular surgery, and vision center.

Designed as more of an office-type space, this facility didn’t require the air-quality standards of an actual hospital, but air changes and energy efficiency were still programming priorities. Mechanical designers created an economical system that offered consistent comfort and air quality for a clinic schedule, but also met 24/7 temperature requirements for specialized equipment related to nuclear medicine and CT scanning.
 
This spacious design required a lot of emergency lights, which would ordinarily be battery-operated and high-maintenance. Instead, the specialty lighting was wired into a central battery inverter system, requiring a single maintenance point to support all the dedicated lights in corridors and procedure rooms, efficiently satisfying the need for backup/redundancy.