firm chosen for giant medical construction project

Home Page > About Us > News & Events > News 2010 > Firm Chosen for Giant Medical Construction Project

Firm Chosen for Giant Medical Construction Project

Back

The tender, estimated at hundreds of millions of shekels is for an underground, three-level parking lot that can be turned, at short notice, to an emergency hospital protected against unconventional warfare. Funding comes from the government of Israel, and the Ofer, Rappaport and Fishman families. Already a five-acre pit has been completed in preparation for building: a complicated project involving excavation of millions of cubes of salty ground water to the sea – with special permission of the Ministry of the Environment.

Rambam Health Care Center (RHCC) in Haifa is happy to announce that Minerv Engineering has won the tender to construct the central part of the hospital’s development plan. This project involves a subterranean parking lot with a dual function: to hold 1,500 motor vehicles, solving the severe parking shortage in the hospital area, and in emergencies, to serve as a 2,000-patient underground hospital. This hospital area will be protected against both unconventional means of warfare and direct missile attacks.

The computer simulation of the underground hospital at RHCC
Aryeh Sharon, Eldar Sharon, Architects and City Planners ltd©

As part of this plan, the health and security establishments have required that the parking lot will be transformed into a regional hospital in times of crisis. To that end, the lot will incorporate emergency medical systems. This structure will be funded through donations by the Sammy Ofer family and through government budgets.

Together with construction of the parking lot/underground hospital, three additional structures will be built as a central part of the new “western campus” of Rambam: the Ruth Rappaport Children’s Hospital, a donation of the Bruce Rappaport family, a new hospital for heart disease, and a new cancer hospital donated by the Joseph Fishman family.

The huge project covers an area of 90,000 meters. In preparation for the massive construction, a deep, five-acre pit has been dug by the "Zamentcol" company. This represents a complicated engineering feat: already at relatively shallow levels, the excavators reached great quantities of salty ground water (the sea is only tens of meters from the excavation). This demanded large-scale pumping of groundwater in to the sea, an effort that was closely supervised by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, to ensure that permit dictates were met.

To prepare the tender awarded to Minerv Engineering, a steering committee was established with the participation of Epstein Engineering Company; the legal firm, Herzog, Fox, Neaman; and the economic advisors, Kesselman and Kesselman. The planning of the parking lot and children’s hospital was overseen by the office of Sharon Architects. The oncological and heart disease hospitals were planned by Dagan Mochly Architects Ltd., and Yossi Shiron was the constructor. The current tender comprises about a third of the scope of the entire project. During the summer of 2010, additional tenders for completion projects will be issued.

Arie Berkowitz, head of Rambam’s Engineering Department, estimates that the project will take 22 months to complete. Berkowitz said the Municipality of Haifa has defined the project as vital to the city’s development, and will support night construction to reduce completion time.