[BTinSF]

Friday, August 7, 2009
UCSF to cut $100M from Mission Bay hospital plan
San Francisco Business Times - by Chris Rauber

UCSF Medical Center plans to slash another $100 million from the projected $1.686 billion price tag for its new women’s, children’s and cancer specialty hospital at Mission Bay, as UCSF, the University of California system and many would-be philanthropists face daunting fiscal challenges.

Officials told the Business Times the medical center has already shaved $200 million in projected spending that had previously pushed the Mission Bay project’s estimated price tag to nearly $1.9 billion.

On top of that, the medical center’s leadership “has mandated” a new budget target of $1.586 billion, said Cindy Lima, executive director of UCSF’s Mission Bay hospital project. “Our potential donors want to know we are doing everything possible to contain costs,” she said.

Some of the cost savings are likely to be achieved by the decrease in construction inflation and raw materials prices that have accompanied the economic slowdown. But Lima said her 100-strong team at the university’s Integrated Center for Design and Construction is also looking for savings both large and small throughout the project, adding that the discipline involved “is almost excruciating.”

For example, she said, UCSF has wrestled an estimated $800,000 out of the budget merely by changing specifications for the hinges on about 2,700 doors in the new complex.

Lima said UCSF won’t have a final handle on cost estimates for the Mission Bay hospital complex until next July, when bidding on the project is expected to be completed. Few specifics are available at this point, since the medical center has yet to pick many partners in the project. Anshen + Allen is the project’s outside architect; DPR Construction is its general contractor.

Stuart Eckblad, an in-house UCSF architect and its director of design and construction, said the medical center will be squeezing costs out of individual systems, like plumbing or heating and cooling, rather than slashing entire departments or units of the facility.

crauber@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4946

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...10/story5.html

I guess if you ever spend any time in that hospital, take a sweater and some ear plugs to cover up the sound of squeaky hinges.