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Kitchell project honored with coveted ASHE Vista award

The American Hospital Association’s American Society for Health Care Engineering (ASHE) has presented a prestigious Vista Award to Kitchell and others who were part of designing and building the UC San Diego Jacobs Medical Center in La Jolla, Calif.

“This project was and still is a milestone project for Kitchell,” said Kitchell Contractors President Steve Whitworth. “For many years Jacobs was the largest healthcare project in San Diego County, and the collaboration lessons learned from that experience reverberate throughout our projects today.”

The Vista Awards are not design awards, but rather recognize the significance of collaboration, communication and teamwork in creating optimal healthcare environments. It is considered the ultimate national recognition in healthcare building and engineering. Jacobs Medical Center was honored in the category of New Construction.

The project team’s transformational approach facilitated an environment of risk-taking and supporting each other. Team members who didn’t adapt to the project’s high-performance team culture were moved to more structured roles, if necessary. Innovation began at the earliest phases, with end-users including patients, family members, medical and hospital staff providing insights and continuous feedback that informed the design and environments.

The Jacobs Medical Center project transformed an existing community hospital into a world-class academic institution. The five-year, $972.9 million project encompassed four distinct phases: enabling projects to prepare the site for development, building an award-winning LEED Gold, 40,000-square-foot central utility plant, selectively renovating the existing community hospital and ultimately constructing the 245-bed, 10-story patient tower.

“This is the ultimate reward for UC San Diego Jacobs Medical Center and the project team,” said UC San Diego Senior Director of Project Management Randy Leopold. “It proves what a true high-performing team can accomplish when it understands the bigger picture and is empowered to ask questions, address challenges, take risks and continually innovate. It’s also a much-deserved validation from the industry, recognizing the thousands of individuals who poured their hearts and souls into creating something in our community that is changing lives.”

The award was presented at the opening session of the 2019 International Summit and Exhibition for Health Facility Planning, Design and Construction™, which was held in Phoenix this year. The two other winners were UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Mass (Renovation) and Lancaster General Hospital in Pennsylvania (Infrastructure).

Article originally appeared in Arizona Business Magazine: https://azbigmedia.com/kitchell-project-honored-with-coveted-ashe-vista-award/

Wendy Cohen named to San Diego’s Most Influential Women in Construction & Design

 

Wendy’s article appeared in a special section of the Feb. 25th issue of the San Diego Business Journal.

Our Southern California Vice President Wendy Cohen was recently named to the San Diego Business Journal’s List of the Most Influential Women in Construction & Design.

Article below:

Wendy Cohen is a rock star in the construction management field. That’s how one co-worker describes the Southern California regional V.P. of Kitchell. Project owners hire construction and program management companies to steer the process of entitlements, design, building, engineering and procurement. Cohen and her team are experts in this area for K-14 education, health care and municipal clients.

Her reputation as a strong mentor stems from her passion for creating high-performing teams within projects.

Her accomplishments over the past year included opening a Los Angeles office for Kitchell and securing a five-year contract with Los Angeles County’s Department of Public Works. In addition, she facilitated several high-performing teams for work at UC San Diego, notably the largest project in the campus’ history: the North Torrey Pines Living and Learning Neighborhood.

Prior to Kitchell, Cohen led the $1 billion Palomar Health program. It was a pivotal time in her career and established a foundation for the way she manages and directs people and projects.
Cohen’s infectious passion extends to her volunteer work and her outdoor pursuits. She has trekked rim-to-rim in the Grand Canyon with cancer survivors, and has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.