UCSF Medical Center celebrates Topping Out

A major milestone was celebrated Monday with the Topping Out of the future UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay in San Francisco.

The 'Topping Out' ceremony - held when the last beam is placed at the top of a building - was celebrated by the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) campus design and construction team on Monday. This is a significant achievement for Arup’s UCSF design team, as the ceremony signifies the completion of structural steel erection for the 878,000ft² project.

Once open, the new, state-of-the-art, 289-bed UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay complex will house three specialty hospitals serving women, children, and cancer patients. The $1.5bn project is currently targeting LEED® Gold certification. The hospital is scheduled to open in 2015.

Arup’s San Francisco office provided structural engineering on the Outpatient Building and Energy Center, and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering on all buildings at the medical centre.

“This has been a challenging and exciting project for all Arup project staff involved. The Integrated Project Delivery model that was followed has reaped tremendous rewards in quality, cost and project schedule, all important aspects for our client.  There is still much construction activity that will occur over the next three years; we look forward to continued successful collaboration with our project partners as we move into the final phase."

-Raj Daswani, Associate Principal at Arup and Project Manager for the engineering team.