Northwestern Medicine Catherine Gratz Griffin Lake Forest Hospital

Opened in 2018, the new hospital transformed the Lake Forest campus into a major regional destination for healthcare. The facility was designed as a critical-care replacement hospital offering inpatient and outpatient care, surgical services, emergency medicine, cancer care, neurosciences, maternity care and other advanced clinical services. Its five interconnected pavilions were designed around both the patient experience and the surrounding natural environment, creating a hospital that combines sophisticated healthcare infrastructure with abundant daylight, landscaped views and extensive open space.

Air Design Systems was responsible for the entire ventilation scope for the new hospital, taking the project from early coordination and constructability input through fabrication and field installation.

ADS also participated during the early stages of the project in design-assist and constructability coordination, working with the project team to help evaluate how the evolving architectural and mechanical design could be efficiently fabricated, coordinated and installed.

That early involvement became particularly important as the project moved into increasingly complex areas of the hospital, where mechanical infrastructure had to support demanding healthcare requirements while remaining carefully integrated into the architectural vision of the building.

With an approximately $14 million ventilation contract and a 20-month project duration, Lake Forest Hospital represented one of ADS’s major healthcare projects and demonstrated our ability to manage a large ventilation package from preconstruction through final installation.

One of the defining features of Lake Forest Hospital was an architectural design intended to feel markedly different from a conventional institutional environment.

ADS worked closely with Gensler and the project team to coordinate thousands of feet of curved ductwork and linear diffusers throughout areas including the hospital’s concourse and rotunda. The mechanical systems needed to follow the architectural geometry while still preserving required access to equipment and maintaining the functionality and serviceability of the ventilation system.

The result required much more than simply installing ductwork from a set of drawings. It demanded continuous coordination between architecture, engineering, fabrication and field installation — exactly the type of environment where ADS’s fabrication and construction experience adds value.

Throughout the project, Air Design Systems identified and developed more than $500,000 in value-engineering solutions.

The objective was not simply to reduce cost. Our team looked for opportunities to improve constructability, coordination and installation while protecting the design intent and performance requirements of a sophisticated healthcare facility.

That ability to combine cost awareness with real-world fabrication and field knowledge is an important part of the value ADS brings when participating early in the construction process.

Lake Forest Hospital was also an important project in the evolution of Air Design Systems’ field technology.

With approximately 1,200 inserts that needed to be laid out and installed within a five-day window, ADS expanded its use of Trimble robotic layout technology to meet the project’s demanding schedule and accuracy requirements.

Rather than accepting layout as a schedule constraint, Air Design Systems invested in additional robotic stations and software to accelerate the work. The experience became part of a larger technology strategy at ADS, with robotic layout subsequently incorporated into projects wherever it can improve accuracy, productivity and field execution.

Northwestern Medicine designed the new Lake Forest Hospital to provide patients in the northern suburbs with a direct connection to the broader Northwestern Medicine academic health system. The hospital opened with 114 private inpatient rooms, 72 outpatient care spaces and eight operating rooms, all within a campus designed around health, wellness and the patient experience. Northwestern Medicine

For Air Design Systems, the project brought together the capabilities that continue to define our healthcare work today: early project involvement, design-assist and constructability thinking, BIM and trade coordination, in-house sheet metal fabrication, technology-driven layout and large-scale field execution.

Air Design Systems’ performance on the project was recognized by Turner Construction with a Subcontractor of the Year Award, reflecting the collaboration, planning and execution required to deliver one of Northwestern Medicine’s landmark suburban healthcare facilities. RFP Packet ADS