Project: Houston Methodist – The Woodlands Hospital Interior
>>> Houston Methodist -The Woodlands Hospital was designed to provide the surrounding community a full service, acute care hospital with many of the same services found at the main Methodist Hospital in the Medical Center. With this in mind, they constructed a new 193 bed, 470,000 sq. ft. hospital. Methodist wanted patients and visitors to feel at home from the moment they entered the hospital and utilized natural light and natural stone for the 6-story Atrium Lobby to create an atmosphere of warmth and wellness.
Camarata Masonry Systems, Ltd. (CMS) performed the stone scope of work and supplied and installed approximately 10,000 sq. ft. of Desert Brown granite pavers, 370 sq. ft. Desert Brown granite radius cubic fountain pieces, 315 sq. ft. of Desert Brown granite treads and risers, and 4,400 sq. ft. of Sapphire Blue granite pavers in the Atrium Lobby of the hospital. CMS also furnished and installed 450 sq. ft. of Bianco Bella marble at the gift shop store front, 1,270 sq. ft. Creame Marfil marble at the chapel entry, 1,180 sq. ft. of Botticino marble cladding at the elevator lobby, and 8,380 sq. ft. of Desert Brown granite tile floors for the first floor main corridors, the doctor’s cafeteria, the gift shop and the third floor sky plaza.
One of the unusual requirements in the construction of this project was that the general contractor broke the construction into 53 sections, each section with its own completion date and punch list completion date. The Atrium Lobby was the 53rd section to be completed and the section that contained the majority of the stone setting. With a tight schedule and a deadline closing in, the general contractor asked CMS to take on the leaf shape granite fountain in the Atrium Lobby. On December 15th CMS was released to proceed on the fountain and given a completion date of March 7th. Within this short time frame CMS completed shop drawings and shop tickets, forwarded them to its Chinese fabricator and coordinated the stone fabrication prior to it being shipped back to Houston for installation. While the shop drawings and shop tickets were released to the fabricator just before Christmas, the fabrication process took approximately 30 days. The challenge for the fabricator was creating the smooth polished radius face on every piece. The caps were not only radiused but were 6” thick and canted towards the interior of the fountain. After fabrication the material was shipped to Houston, spending 30 days in transit and 5 days in customs clearance. CMS was able to begin installing stone on March 2nd. The 40 foot long, 12 foot wide fountain (containing 64 pieces, with 6 different radius points and an average weight of more than 150 pounds each) was installed in 4 days. In spite of the difficult schedule CMS self-performed the entire stone scope and installed more than 2,000 stone pieces in the Atrium Lobby, with the fountain being one of the main architectural features in the building. The general contractor was able to turn over the building to the owner on March 31, 2017, well in advance of the hospital’s ribbon cutting ceremony on June 10, 2017 and the major grand opening on July 1, 2017.
