When zero dust onsite is critical

When Prisma Health’s Greenville Memorial Hospital in South Carolina needed to revamp its Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), it called in DPR Construction and the Falkbuilt Greenville Branch by CBI. Having zero dust on the job site, one of the many advantages to Digital Component Construction, was an important consideration.

“You think of traditional walls and there’s drywall and finishing and dust and paint,” says Allison Anderson, DPR’s project manager for the NICU renovation. “In a hospital, you never want any of that but especially in a neonatal unit where you are working around the most immunocompromised patients. A lot of babies are in the NICU because their lungs are still developing, their systems are still developing, so even a small amount of dust could be completely detrimental to their health.”

There were two phases to the NICU renovation—renovating rooms around the perimeter and then creating headwalls in a “pinwheel” formation in the center of the space. There were a few lessons learned in the first go around but the second phase “was a much smoother process,” says Allison.

“For us to have the Falkbuilt system that slots right in the schedule, creates no additional dust or mess or anything that could be possibly tracked out of the space or get into the air vents was huge,” she says.

And, now that DPR and Falkbuilt have successfully installed a big project in one of the hardest, most difficult construction environments—a NICU—she says the next projects together “will be a cakewalk!”