Project Update

St. Mary’s Hospital Century Project
Grand Junction, CO

EDI was hired as St. Mary’s Hospital’s Information Technology consultant for the new Century Project.

Initially, EDI facilitated visioning sessions to discuss technology in the new facility and developed objectives and goals around this new technology. Upon completion of our visioning phase, EDI began programming and schematic design services for the structured cabling system, local area network, wireless local area network telephone system, overhead paging, nurse call, access control, networked video security system, patient hospitality systems, patient monitoring, telemetry, cable TV, audio/visual, and distributed antenna systems. EDI continued these design services through design development and construction documents.

EDI was then hired to provide IT construction management services for all the low-voltage technology systems. EDI created RFP’s for each of the system mentioned above and managed the procurement process. EDI worked closely with each clinical department, the IT department, the owner’s representative, and the construction team to ensure all infrastructure and systems were ready for patient care. Additionally, EDI provided IT transition consulting, consisting of coordinating the IT move management from the existing facility into the new building. This entailed working directly and very closely with each department in the transitional planning process. EDI inventoried and labeled the existing PC’s, phones, printers, monitors and other peripheral equipment to then create a move management schedule for the equipment. EDI coordinated equipment reconnections to the network in the new building, including cross-connections in the Technology Distribution Rooms to the network switches. As the final step, EDI provided oversight of system testing and training for each of the systems.

St. Mary’s Hospital benefited tremendously from EDI’s role in the technology construction management and integration services. Typically, EDI’s scope of services includes a basic Construction Administration phase to help answer RFI’s, provide periodic site walks, and provide punch lists for the technology systems. Due to the quantity and complexity of technology systems in healthcare facilities, this Construction Administration role is inadequate to meet the needs of today’s technology-enabled hospital. By having an individual from EDI committed to this phase of the project full-time, St. Mary’s Hospital saved many thousands of dollars and were committed to not taking short cuts in regards to the technology infrastructure, system selection, integration, or implementation.

Often, when technology oversight is assigned to a general contractor, they tend to make decisions about these systems without asking the appropriate questions. Examples include eliminating cable tray due to HVAC duct conflicts and not providing an adequate remedy; or installing water pipes, sewer pipes, and high-voltage electrical conduits in technology distribution rooms without realizing the potential life-threatening disaster this creates. In addition to the many thousands of dollars saved by having the technology contractors and vendors work directly for the hospital, EDI also helped save hundreds of thousands of dollars in construction related items.