Meeting the Needs of Today and Tomorrow at Florida Hospital
For twenty-nine years, RLF has enjoyed the opportunity to be an invited and active member of the Florida Hospital team providing master planning and design services on all seven Orlando area campuses – Orlando, East Orlando, Altamonte, Apopka, Celebration Health, Kissimmee and Winter Park Memorial Hospital.
The surgery expansion at Florida Hospital’s north campus expanded and modernized one of the largest open-heart programs in the country, a difficult and complex undertaking while maintaining the existing surgery program throughout construction. Completed in three main phases, the project provided 66,300 square feet of infill construction and 67,000 square feet of alterations within four stories of the existing hospital (illustrated below; alterations-gray and new constrution-green). A series of sub-phases were required to assure that the number of OR’s in use would never drop below the required capacity to meet demand. The phasing was organized around existing services which were to continue throughout construction. 
The project required careful planning and complex engineering solutions such as the addition of duplicate generator paralleling switchgear designed to keep the existing generators in service, re-routing of existing site infrastructure, and construction and relocation of a new loading dock. RLF was the third team of designers to propose designs for the surgery expansion and the first to present a workable solution which permitted reuse of existing ORs. This solution resulted in significant savings, allowing the client to
move forward with the project.
Following this effort, RLF was brought in to interface the campus’ new central energy plant with the existing hospital, while maintaining all medical operations throughout the facility. The project was so complex and difficult that Florida Hospital specifically requested the RLF engineering team be brought in to accomplish the work. Completed in thirty-seven phases, the project involved eighty-five automatic transfer switches, a dozen emergency power substations, and was completed with zero interruptions to service. Because of its complexity, the engineering team provided detailed documents with step-by-step instructions for placement of temporary services and selective demolition. Completed over a two-year span, the project reconnected all emergency power loads to the new paralleling switchgear, giving additional capacity and redundancy to ensure the hospital could remain fully functional even during hazardous weather conditions.
