Using prefabricated elements in the construction of the new Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver cut 72 workdays off the construction schedule and resulted in $4.3 million in savings, according to an article on the University of Colorado Boulder website.

Prefabrication can be an efficient technique in hospitals or any large building where the same type of unit has to be built repeatedly. At the Saint Joseph hospital, the need to have hospital rooms with standard equipment and private bathrooms allowed the project to prefabricate 440 bathroom units and 376 patient-room headwalls.

Aside from allowing a project to be completed more quickly, prefabricating units offsite can also improve the safety of the job site by decreasing the number of different tradespeople who need to work in the building at any one time, reducing elevated work and providing a controlled environment, according to a study by University of Colorado Boulder engineers.

Beyond the cost benefits calculated in the study, it may be possible for builders to save even more time in the future by perfecting the sequence of work. In the case of the Saint Joseph Hospital, some prefabricated elements moved the project forward so quickly, that the workers responsible for the next phase of the project weren’t always ready to immediately get started.

Read the article.