Kaiser Fresno Medical Center Acute Care and Emergency Department Expansion

Fresno, CA

Faced with an ever-increasing patient population, the Kaiser Fresno Medical Center needed to expand to meet the needs of its growing community. Complete with a new cardiac catheterization lab, interventional radiology suites, and 20 more emergency department beds, this expansion project sets up top-tier patient care for decades to come.

The project team elected to use a structural system comprising moment frames with SidePlate connections, facilitating wide open and welcoming spaces for patient care and expedient construction. This system also allowed structural member sizes to be smaller, which reduced material costs and helped provide an elegance to the building desired by the architect. Further aiding the expansion’s aesthetic is the tall, curvilinear architectural feature wall which also functions as a roof screen.

The state-of-the-art biplane catheter imaging machine needed to be snug tight to the ceiling yet able to move and spin without tilt — no small feat for equipment weighing 3,000 lbs. in total. To accomplish this, our team gave extra attention to the roof, ensuring its steel had adequate stiffness and that any deflection was minimal and/or mitigated. Supporting the many different exterior faces and finishes required a similar high degree of articulation to provide an inspiring, patient-centered facility ready to serve the community for decades to come.