Client

Department of Veteran Affairs
VA North Texas Health Care System

The Project

Anderson led a multi-disciplinary team to develop the Clinical Expansion for Mental Health (CEMH) Project Book for the VA North Texas Health Care System, Dallas campus. The project includes pre-design planning efforts for construction of an approximately 170,000 GSF Mental Health Clinic and Domiciliary building. In addition to the CEMH building was planning for a new multi-level parking ramp, utility infrastructure, site parking and traffic flow improvements. Overall, the project would impact approximately half of the campus.

The primary goal was to consolidate the mental health departments into one building for comprehensive mental health care. Master planning for the CEMH project focused on strategic site placement, campus impacts and building design that optimized patient, staff and campus flow while exploring numerous opportunities to include innovative patient centered design. The CEMH Building allows for ideal proximity of outpatient and inpatient care allowing seamless flow between program spaces for patients and staff flexibility while also maintaining connections to Building 1 and the main hospital. The concept building plans for the CEMH building incorporated priority program adjacencies, simplified wayfinding, controlled environments, and natural daylighting.

Finally, our team developed a major milestone construction phasing plan that was integrated with a master schedule of contacts for a ranged timeline including the duration of the CEMH project. The sequential order and content of each phase was crucial to the continued operation of the campus, traffic, patient care, and overall success of the project.