How Drawing Review Found $95K in 3 Chicago Healthcare Issues

Room Pressure, Smoke Barriers, and Hand Sinks Worth $95,000

An engineering firm was preparing construction documents for a healthcare facility in Chicago.

Healthcare work leaves little room for coordination gaps. Room pressure, smoke compartments, and handwashing all have code and infection-control requirements, and each one depends on more than one discipline getting it right.

A miss here fails inspection, opens a finished ceiling, and delays occupancy. The engineer of record owns the fix.

Helonic Caught $50,000, $25,000, and $20,000 Before Issue

The firm uploaded the PDF set before issue. Helonic compared the room requirements on the architectural sheets with the mechanical schedules and the plumbing plans.

The report listed many issues across the set. Three of them carried the largest field cost, and together they came to about $95,000.

The first, and the most expensive, was isolation room pressure. The architectural plans marked the isolation rooms as negative pressure, but the airflow schedule supplied more air to those rooms than it exhausted. Built as scheduled, the rooms would have pushed air into the corridor instead of pulling it in. Finding that at test and balance means a larger exhaust fan, new ductwork, and re-certifying the rooms, which the firm put at about $50,000.

The second was smoke dampers. Ducts on the mechanical plans crossed smoke barriers shown on the life safety plans, and no smoke damper was drawn at those crossings. Adding dampers after the ceilings close means opening them, adding access panels, and wiring each damper to the fire alarm. That was estimated at about $25,000.

The third was hand sinks. The architectural plans placed hand sinks in rooms that need them for infection control, but the plumbing plans had no water or waste at those locations. Adding the lines after the walls are closed means opening walls and floors in finished rooms, which the firm priced at about $20,000.

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$95,000 Across 3 Issues, Fixed Before the Set Went Out

The firm corrected these three, along with the rest of the report, in its own drawings before the set went out.

The isolation room airflow was rebalanced on the schedule to hold negative pressure, smoke dampers were added at every barrier crossing, and the hand sinks were plumbed.

Those three issues alone came to about $95,000 in field rework the firm kept on paper: $50,000 for isolation room pressure, $25,000 for smoke dampers, and $20,000 for hand sinks. As engineer of record, those would have come back to the firm as RFIs and change orders during construction.

“The isolation rooms would have run positive, the ducts crossed smoke barriers with no dampers, and the hand sinks had no water. Those three alone were about $95,000 of field fixes, and they were only part of what Helonic found.”

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