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Infographic showing the four pillars of project management: Communication, Coordination, Documentation, and Oversight. The four pillars are built on a foundation of Shared Trust and Vision of Project Goals, and together they result in Project Success.

10 Tips for Successfully Managing Big Projects

Project success is no accident. It requires rigorous and continuous management and hard work from all team members and stakeholders. Large, multi-year projects take these requirements to another level, demanding multi-layered communication, coordination, record-keeping, and oversight from each discipline individually and from overall project leaders. Healthcare projects add on the input of medical planning teams and user groups, whose needs and requirements may evolve through the project’s long timeline.

Two PCS engineers collaborate on a project together.

The Power of Teamwork in Healthcare Design and Construction

Hospitals and outpatient centers are among the most intricate building types in the AEC world. Each square foot must reliably integrate clinical workflows, stringent building codes, vibration limits for sensitive equipment, and 24/7 operational resilience. Add to that the need for designs that support future adaptability, construction in occupied facilities that must be carefully phased around active patient care, and the reality that every day of project delay can affect lives—not just budgets—and the stakes become clear.

Debbie Shaffer Retires from PCS Structural Solutions After 31 Years

In 1981, the coffee pot at 950 Fawcett Avenue was likely to overcook, leaving a ring of coffee sediment baked to the bottom. Fifteen structural engineers at the firm of Chalker Engineers were busy making their mark in Tacoma. The engineers hunched over worktables pencil sketching structural designs onto large mylar sheets, careful to brush off pencil findings with horsehair brushes. Business was good. There were five phone lines, a full rolodex, and plenty of message pads.

Samaritan Health Moses Lake Hospital, steel frame construction

Design Innovation in the Heart of Washington: A New Hospital Comes to Moses Lake

Samaritan Healthcare in Moses Lake is a 174,000 SF, 50-bed community hospital that replaced an existing 1950s facility that had reached the end of its useful life and was no longer adequately meeting the rapidly growing Moses Lake community’s needs for locally based, high-quality care. The greenfield new construction includes full-service care with an expanded emergency department; expanded specialty, surgical, and post-anesthesia care spaces; a mother and baby unit; a teaching area; and physical therapy services. PCS Structural Solutions was the structural engineer for the project, part of a GC/CM team led by ZGF and Graham Construction.