Ensuring Comfort and Safety for Patients and Staff While Re-Roofing the Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale

Holy Cross Hospital is a 557-bed nonprofit, medical center, home to emergency operating rooms, maternity ward, and cancer center located in east Fort Lauderdale, FL. Built in 1955, the aging coal-tar-pitch roof systems on the hospital’s various buildings were at the end of their useful service life, causing leaks and jeopardizing the safety of the patients, employees, and expensive operating equipment. To help restore the aging roof systems, Advanced Roofing Inc. (ARI) completed several re-roofing projects from January 2015 through July 2019.

Scope of Work

Due to its budget requirements, Holy Cross Hospital took a phased approach to repair the roofing systems at its main campus in Fort Lauderdale. This final phase was to replace 113,800-square-foot of roofs on several multi-story buildings ranging from one to six stories high. Using a 10-person crew, ARI tore off the original system and applied a Pika-Ply preliminary roof system with adhered tapered polyiso insulation and a Carlisle Sure-Flex 60 mil PVC single-ply membrane.

The process included five staging areas to accommodate all roof levels and involved:

• Removing the existing lightweight concrete on several areas of the roof that were in the center of the campus with surrounding higher roof sections.
• Raising/ lowering materials and transporting them across the different levels of the roof to the designated work areas.
• Removing debris and trash daily with our crane staged near the Emergency Room without disrupting operations.

Overcoming Challenges

Working in an occupied hospital brought its own set of challenges. To minimize disruptions, direct shipments of materials were received during off-hours by tractor tailors. To accommodate material storage, parking areas on the campus were closed, with the parking area for doctors moved. In addition to logistics, ensuring the safety of hospital patients, staff, and medical equipment was of top importance as the roofing systems were being installed. Precautions, including charcoal filters on air intakes, were taken to eliminate odors from asphalt primer and solvent-based adhesives inside the buildings’ nursery, Operating Room (OR), and other sensitive areas.

Ensuring normal operations entailed having the work plan re-sequenced so hospital operations would not be interrupted, requiring consistent and constant communication between the foreman and hospital to prepare employees. The foreman provided daily scheduling updates to the project manager from Holy Cross, and worked over the OR on weekends only, changing the sequence of work to maintain normal hospital operations to not disrupt surgeons. The foreman also coordinated with other companies working on different projects at the hospital to share laydown areas and manage work schedules to keep all projects on track.

When encountering several issues, including electrical, removal of abandoned curbs, canopy removal, and re-installation, the foreman worked with hospital maintenance staff to provide a quick resolution. Also, during the removal process, the crew discovered roof drains that had been covered, so they redesigned and installed a tapered layout to ensure proper drainage.

Rooftop Safety Plan

To ensure the safety of hospital staff and crew, work areas were fenced off with signage to prohibit people from entering the staging or work areas. Safety was maintained throughout the project without any infractions or injuries.

Project Results

The completed roof systems at Holy Cross Hospital are FM Global insured and exceeded all post-installation testing requirements. As a critical resource for our community in South Florida, the ARI team is proud to have installed a new roofing system on a fully-occupied hospital, with minimal disruption to the essential work being done each day.