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Gillette Children’s hospital in Saint Paul, Minnesota, modernized all seven operating rooms by renovating its existing 13,300-square-foot footprint in five phases over a year while keeping surgery running. The project temporarily reduced capacity to five rooms, and its most difficult work involved coordinating shutdowns and life-safety systems shared with neighboring Regions Hospital. A Building Design + Construction case study, published June 17, 2026, describes the approach and the technology planned for the refreshed rooms. The article was co-authored by representatives of construction manager McGough and architect BWBR, so its project claims and intended benefits should be read as participant accounts rather than an independent outcomes evaluation.
What was Gillette Children’s operating-room renovation?
The work was a modernization of seven existing operating rooms, not a building expansion. Gillette’s strategic facility planning concluded that the current room sizes were appropriate. Instead of adding square footage, the hospital chose to renew the rooms and their equipment at the end of their life cycle, while improving technology, lighting, mechanical controls and the working environment.
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The renovation covered 13,300 square feet. The planned sequence divided the work into five phases across approximately one year. At the time of the June 17, 2026 case study, the first renovated rooms had recently reopened and the overall program was still in progress. It is therefore inaccurate to describe the entire project as complete or to assign final clinical or energy results to it.
How did the team keep patient care operating during construction?
The central operating strategy was phased construction: take only part of the operating-room platform offline, finish that area, then move to the next phase. During construction, Gillette went from seven available rooms to five. That loss of two rooms created a scheduling and access problem that had to be managed alongside normal pediatric care.
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Gillette’s vice president for clinic and hospital operations and chief nurse executive, Katie Penson, summarized the operational risk: “Going from seven ORs to five ORs was a huge challenge.” The project team coordinated around patient needs, surgeon schedules, staff workflows and construction logistics rather than treating construction as a separate activity.
Recurring meetings brought together construction personnel, hospital leaders and surgeons. Those meetings allowed the group to review the upcoming phase, identify cases or workflows that could not be interrupted, and align shutdowns with clinical schedules. The approach also preserved routes for patients, families and staff while work areas were isolated.
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The case study reports one example of that coordination: weekend work to replace fire and smoke dampers was completed without affecting patient care or scheduled surgical access. Weekend work is not a universal solution, but it can provide a controlled window for high-impact life-safety tasks when the hospital, trades and clinical teams agree on the timing and protection measures.
Why did the leased space make infrastructure coordination harder?
Gillette’s operating rooms occupied active leased space connected to Regions Hospital’s infrastructure. Heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, life-safety systems and major mechanical services serving the operating-room platform tied into Regions’ central systems. A shutdown that might appear local to Gillette could therefore affect another organization’s equipment, alarms or patient operations.
This arrangement made the project a cross-organization systems exercise. Before a shutdown, teams had to identify which valves, controls, dampers, alarms and electrical or mechanical feeds served each area; confirm who could authorize an interruption; and establish a restoration and verification sequence. The work also required clear communication with Regions so that the neighboring hospital could protect its own operations.
The damper replacement illustrates why shared infrastructure changes the risk profile. Fire and smoke dampers are part of a building’s life-safety strategy, so replacing them is not simply a matter of removing old hardware and installing new hardware. Access, fire-watch or interim-protection requirements, testing, documentation and final sign-off all have to be coordinated with the facilities that depend on the system. The case study’s successful weekend installation demonstrates the value of that planning, but it does not provide a broader performance study.
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Gillette operations and clinical leaders worked with BWBR as architect, Dunham as engineering partner and McGough as construction manager. Surgeons and frontline staff were included in recurring coordination, giving the design and construction teams direct information about room use, turnover, equipment placement and patient movement.
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The source is a Building Design + Construction article co-authored by a McGough business development director and a BWBR senior project manager. Their perspectives provide detailed descriptions of the project and its intended benefits, but they are not independent verification. No separate clinical evaluation, measured energy report or later completion update was identified for this case.
What changed inside the operating rooms?
The refreshed rooms use a standardized layout. Standardization is intended to make the rooms feel familiar from one case to the next, reduce variation in where equipment and controls are found, and simplify transitions for surgical teams working across rooms. It also gives facilities staff a repeatable basis for maintenance and future upgrades.
Surgical ceiling and lighting systems
Each room received a surgical ceiling system with lighting platforms and integrated diffuser technology. The arrangement brings operating illumination and air-distribution components into a coordinated ceiling design instead of treating them as unrelated overhead elements.
New surgical lights provide multiple operating modes. The case study specifically describes a green mode intended to eliminate glare on monitors. That feature addresses a practical conflict in modern operating rooms: clinicians need bright, controlled light at the surgical field while also viewing digital images and displays. The source describes the intended function; it does not report measured glare reduction or clinical outcomes.
Networked digital integration
A network-based digital integration platform links data and video connections and allows different equipment to be controlled through one interface. In a room with imaging, monitors and other connected devices, a common interface can reduce the number of separate controls that staff must locate and operate.
Integration also creates infrastructure obligations. Network segmentation, device addressing, cybersecurity, software support, training and downtime procedures need to be defined before the room is put into service. The project description identifies the platform and its purpose but does not name a product, publish a cybersecurity assessment or quantify time saved.
Digital room and patient boards
Digital room and patient boards display room readiness and critical patient information. The stated goal is to give teams a shared view of whether a room is ready and what information is essential for the patient and procedure.
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Because these displays can contain protected health information, implementation must include role-based access, privacy positioning, automatic timeouts or other safeguards required by the hospital’s policies. The case study does not describe Gillette’s specific privacy controls, so those details should not be inferred.
How were HVAC and lighting systems upgraded?
The renovation included updated mechanical systems, enhanced airflow, HVAC setbacks and LED lighting. These measures were selected to improve room control and reduce energy use when rooms are not occupied.
HVAC setbacks can lower conditioning during unoccupied periods, but operating rooms have strict temperature, humidity, pressure and air-change requirements. A setback strategy therefore has to be tied to the hospital’s infection-control criteria, room status and restart time. Controls must return the room to its required condition before a case begins, with alarms and manual overrides available if the automated sequence fails.
Enhanced airflow and integrated diffuser technology were described as project features, not as proof of a measured infection-control improvement. Likewise, LED fixtures generally offer controllability and lower connected lighting power, but the available data contains no baseline utility data, post-occupancy measurements or verified savings. The defensible claim is that the project incorporated these design measures; actual performance remains unreported.
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Why renovate the existing footprint instead of expanding?
Gillette’s facility planning found that the existing operating-room dimensions were suitable. Refreshing that footprint avoided the additional structural, permitting, utility and operational complexity of an expansion while allowing the hospital to replace aging room systems and equipment.
That choice also concentrated the project’s difficulty in sequencing and coordination. An expansion might create new capacity before the old rooms are disturbed; a renovation must work around active rooms, existing partitions and shared infrastructure. Gillette’s case shows how a hospital can pursue a technology and systems reset without assuming that more square footage is the only route to improvement.
What did the phased plan require from hospital leadership?
Leadership had to treat construction capacity as a clinical resource. With two fewer rooms available during the work, scheduling decisions affected surgeons, anesthesia, nursing, sterile processing, recovery areas and families. The recurring coordination meetings created a forum to make those trade-offs explicitly rather than allowing them to surface as day-to-day surprises.
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A practical phased plan for a similar hospital should identify, for each phase:
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- Which patient routes, staff paths and emergency access points remain open.
- Which utility shutdowns are required, who owns each system and how the system will be restored.
- How dust, noise, vibration, pressure relationships and infection-control risks will be contained.
- Which cases can be scheduled in the remaining rooms and what contingency exists if a phase slips.
- What commissioning, cleaning and clinical sign-off must occur before a renovated room reopens.
Gillette’s reported use of joint meetings with construction, hospital leaders and surgeons is the governance mechanism behind those decisions. The source does not publish a detailed schedule, cost or list of contingency cases, so those elements should be developed locally rather than assumed from this project.
What sustainability claims can the project support?
The case study supports a feature-level description: LED lighting, enhanced airflow, HVAC setbacks and selected materials were included with sustainability in mind. These choices were intended to reduce energy consumption when rooms were not in use and to improve the efficiency of the refreshed platform.
It does not support a numerical claim about savings, carbon reduction or payback. There is no reported baseline, metered comparison, occupancy normalization or post-occupancy evaluation. Hospitals assessing a similar investment should establish those measures before construction, then compare them after the controls have stabilized. Until that data exists, sustainability should be presented as a design intent and set of installed measures, not a verified outcome.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What can other hospitals learn from Gillette’s approach?
First, map shared systems before drawing the shutdown plan. In leased or connected facilities, the landlord or neighboring hospital may control central equipment, alarms or access. A utility survey and authority matrix should precede any demolition or isolation work.
Second, schedule around clinical reality. A room-by-room construction sequence is only workable when surgeons, nurses, anesthesia teams and schedulers help define the constraints. Recurrent meetings are more effective than a one-time kickoff because each phase introduces new interfaces.
Third, standardize what staff must touch. Consistent room layouts, lighting controls and digital interfaces can reduce orientation time when teams move between rooms. Standardization should be checked against specialty-specific needs before every room is made identical.
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Fourth, commission technology and air systems as one platform. Networked equipment, room boards, lighting modes and HVAC setbacks create dependencies. Training, cybersecurity, alarm testing, pressure verification and documented fallback procedures belong in the opening plan, not as postscript tasks.
Fifth, separate intended benefits from measured results. Gillette’s case study explains what the project was designed to achieve and how the team protected access during construction. It does not establish final patient, energy or workflow outcomes. A hospital using the project as a model should define its own metrics and publish them after occupancy.
What is the project’s status?
As of the Building Design + Construction article’s publication on June 17, 2026, the first renovated rooms had recently opened and the overall renovation remained ongoing. The available source therefore supports reporting the project as a phased program in progress at that date, not as a completed renovation with proven outcomes.
The clearest result documented so far is operational: the team carried out demanding work, including weekend fire- and smoke-damper replacement, without disrupting reported patient care or scheduled surgical access. The longer-term effects of the new room layouts, digital systems, airflow strategy and energy controls require completion data and post-occupancy measurement that the source does not provide.
What does this case say about collaborative hospital renovation?
Gillette’s upgrade shows that collaboration is a control system, not a ceremonial project value. Clinical leaders defined what could not be interrupted; surgeons and staff explained how rooms functioned; the architect, engineer and construction manager translated those requirements into phased work; and coordination with Regions Hospital addressed the shared infrastructure underneath the rooms.
The project’s significance is therefore less about any single ceiling, light or software interface than about sequencing a 13,300-square-foot modernization in an active care environment. By refreshing an appropriately sized footprint, standardizing the rooms and coordinating constraints across organizations, Gillette created a path to a future-ready surgical platform without treating patient access as an afterthought.
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How should a hospital measure whether a phased OR renovation worked?
Set baseline measures before construction, such as room turnover time, schedule delays, cancellations, energy use, temperature and humidity compliance, and staff-reported usability. Compare the same measures after each phase and again after operations stabilize, separating construction effects from normal seasonal or scheduling changes.
What approvals are typically needed before shutting down shared hospital utilities?
The exact process depends on ownership and local policy, but it commonly includes facilities authorization, clinical leadership approval, infection-prevention review, life-safety planning, notification of the connected hospital and a documented restoration test. The responsible parties and escalation contacts should be written into the shutdown permit rather than left to informal messages.
How can digital patient boards improve privacy in an operating suite?
Place displays where passersby cannot read them, show only the minimum necessary information and use authentication, automatic logoff or role-based views where appropriate. Hospitals should also define what happens to the board during a network outage so staff can continue using an approved paper or local workflow.
When is renovating an existing OR footprint preferable to adding rooms?
Renovation can be preferable when room sizes and support capacity are adequate but systems and equipment have reached the end of their useful life. Expansion may be more appropriate when demand cannot be met even after workflow improvements; the decision should account for future volume, utility capacity, infection-control separation, capital cost and the operational impact of taking existing rooms offline.
