Walking by construction sites scattered across campus, students
may be more likely to wonder how their path to class will be
blocked than what the magnitude of costs involved in the projects
are.
Construction of the Westwood Replacement Hospital on Westwood
Boulevard is one construction project with a budget both great and
prone to change.
“It’s the largest construction project we’ve
ever done (in terms of cost),” said Anne-Marie Spataru,
director of administration for Health Sciences Capital
Projects.
Spataru works for Capital Programs, which is responsible for
maintaining and adjusting the budget for construction projects on
campus.
One aspect of the large project budget is the amount of changes
made during the initial stages of planning and construction.
The Replacement Hospital project began with approval by the UC
Board of Regents, which allowed a $22 million design budget.
The money spent on design is used to pay the architect and
programming fees and produce an environmental impact analysis.
Design fees are considered a percentage of construction
costs.
The money allotted for the Replacement Hospital design is not
unusual for a project this large, Spataru said.
After approval of a design budget, the regents approved a total
budget of $597.7 million.
The budget was increased to $672.7 million when medical
equipment costs were added into the overall amount.
The current budget is lower due to fundraiser success, causing
the cost to decrease by $15 million.
These funds decreased the budget because they paid off interest
that would have accrued during construction.
Fundraising is only one of the factors involved in changing the
budget during planning and construction.
Another element of budgeting is change orders, which are early
alterations in construction.
The orders deal with the process of reconsidering design plans
as they pertain to site conditions.
Management tries to minimize change orders, but they are always
going to happen during construction, Spataru said.
In terms of construction, universities and government agencies
are required to hire the lowest bidding contractor for a project in
order to keep construction costs down.
Cost estimates are made by Capital Programs, the main
construction company on campus, before bidding, but because the
results are unknown at the time, the numbers can change, Spataru
said.
Tutor-Saliba-Perini is the contracting company that won the
bidding competition for the Replacement Hospital project.
The contracting company has not produced any costs extraneous to
the budget, and Capital Programs does not anticipate any additional
costs in the future, Spataru said.
Funding for the immense project comes from state and federal
funds, as well as hospital reserves and gifts.
The Replacement Hospital is the first construction project in a
seismic reconstruction plan to be implemented on facilities on the
Westwood and Santa Monica Medical Center campuses.