Key Player In Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge Construction To Design New Roper St. Francis Berkeley Hospital

BERKELEY COUNTY, S.C.–The new Roper St. Francis Berkeley Hospital will be designed by the same firm that helped create the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge.

HDR, a global architecture and engineering firm, immediately will begin collaborating with Roper St. Francis to design the campus in Moncks Corner. That process should take about a year. The construction phase of the project will take about two years, and Roper St. Francis Berkeley Hospital should open by 2019.

“Roper St. Francis selected HDR for its high level of design creativity, depth in evidence-based practice, strong engineering background and excellent team,” said Scott Broome, chief executive officer of Roper St. Francis Berkeley Hospital. “They are forward thinking and will be able to guide us in creating a health village.”

Broome compared a health village to a college campus. Colleges are more than dormitories; they have academic buildings, green spaces and gathering areas. Similarly, the hospital will be more than an inpatient facility; it will have multiple buildings offering outpatient services. The Roper St. Francis Hospital Berkeley site will be developed to best accommodate the way patients access healthcare, he said.

“HDR has extensive experience in doing a green field hospital, or transforming a site with nothing on it and building a welcoming facility that puts patients at the center of design,” Broome said. “This will be a facility that takes us into the future. We want to be the community’s preferred partner for innovative, patient-centered healthcare for years to come.”

HDR has been recognized as the No. 1 architectural firm in healthcare design by numerous publications, including Modern Healthcare, Building Design and Building Design+Construction. It’s best known locally for serving as the owner’s representative for the iconic Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. In that role, HDR was part of an integrated team that oversaw the bridge design and construction. It has continued to provide in-service inspection and operations for the bridge since its completion in 2009.

Some of HDR’s high-profile healthcare design projects include Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi and Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital Research and Education facility in Florida.

“We understand the importance of this new hospital to the community, and are looking forward to working alongside Roper St. Francis to elevate the standard of care in the region, something we’ve been proudly doing since 1961,” said Neal Corbett, project principal for HDR. “We believe that the most successful healthcare design solutions are derived from real collaboration and open communication of all stakeholders.”

The initial phase of design will be master campus planning, which includes where to put roads and buildings. Once that is completed, design efforts will be more focused on the interior spaces, and that will involve significant input from Roper St. Francis teammates.

The 140,000-square-foot hospital will feature 50 beds and offer obstetrics, physical therapy, infusion therapy, radiology and imaging services, as well as an emergency department and pharmacy. A medical office building will be built next door on the 90-acre campus. The project is expected to create 285 new jobs in the Lowcountry.