The Jaynes Way: A University of New Mexico Children’s Hospital Project Retrospective

JAYNES AND THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL PROJECT 

By Matt Andersen, Jaynes Division Manager Albuquerque

At a recent Jaynes Breakfast Meeting, our monthly all-hands meeting, we discussed the importance of our culture. We call it The Jaynes Way. Its origin story is disputed, but the concept has existed here since at least the 1980s. In this meeting, I did a presentation spotlighting a formative Jaynes project, the UNM Children’s Hospital. The project was constructed between November 2004 and June 2007. I was fortunate to work on this project as a Project Engineer Intern while attending UNM for my degree.

It was a pivotal project for Jaynes, the largest we had ever undertaken. At the time, the construction industry was prospering, and Jaynes was in a period of substantial growth. Projects the size of the UNM Children’s Hospital were rarely seen in the New Mexico market then. The new 6-story, 485,000 square foot facility would be the largest Jaynes had ever constructed. Jaynes partnered with JE Dunn out of Kansas City, MO, to undertake this challenging project. JE Dunn was a valuable and respected partner with tremendous knowledge and experience executing large healthcare construction projects.

The project featured space for New Mexico’s first Level I trauma center, emergency departments, state-of-the-art imaging equipment, intensive care units, operating rooms, infusion space, and labor and delivery suites, all of which would bring much-needed additional healthcare capacity and resources to fast-growing New Mexico.

The project was another growing opportunity for our self-performed operation, Jaynes Structures, which placed over 20,000 cubic yards of concrete.

Jaynes and our trade partners worked over 1,000,000 man-hours to complete the project, including day and night shifts over six critical months of the 31-month project. In the days before smartphones, electronic drawings, and Procore, the management team processed an immense amount of paperwork to keep pace with crews in the field. This included 2,740 RFIs, 400 submittals, and 966 cost proposals. At the time, much of this documentation was routed via hard copies. The fax machine was then regularly used to route project documentation. We coordinated the steel erection sequence using a styrofoam model and a digital camera. Above-ceiling MEP coordination was still being completed with 2-dimensional plan overlays, which were minimally effective compared to today’s 3D modeling capabilities. Looking back at what we accomplished then, with so much less technology, it’s a testament to the project teams’ persistence and to our industry’s subsequent creation and adoption of advanced, delivery-accelerating technology since then.

The University of New Mexico Children’s Hospital project was full of excitement, challenges, and learning opportunities. Ultimately, the Jaynes project team’s coming together to overcome challenges was the driving force behind the successful completion of this iconic facility.

The project team included Greg Krause, then Project Superintendent, today EVP of Operations; Rick Letscher, then Carpenter Journeyman, today Director of Field Operations; Patrick Aragon; then Project Engineer Intern, now Sr. Project Manager; Jeremiah Hayes, then Project Engineer, now VP of Jaynes Four Corners Division; Jose Garcia, then Carpenter Journeyman, now Superintendent; Josh Wilmot, then Concrete Project Manager, now Concrete Operations Estimator; and Mark Harwell, then Safety Coordinator and recently retired as Jaynes Safety Training Director.

Many of the key players on this project are still with Jaynes today and were formative in Jaynes’ subsequent growth. These people went on to complete large, complex projects, including V. Sue Cleveland High School, New Mexico Scientific Laboratories, and multiple projects for Owner Presbyterian Healthcare Services. All these projects and so many more were built upon the experience we gained at UNM Children’s Hospital and helped accelerate Jaynes’ growth.

THE JAYNES WAY

Every company has a mission statement, often written by outside consulting companies with little knowledge of our industry’s values and the commitment we all bring to it. Mission statements written on paper are important to document, share, and teach, but the values we live and breathe in our jobs will always be more valuable. That’s The Jaynes Way.

Mentorship is the backbone of The Jaynes Way. Those Jaynes employees on the UNM Children’s Hospital project were taught The Jaynes Way, and they then later taught it to their project teams, usually leading by example. There’s a reason everyone here talks about Jaynes like it’s a family: in so many ways, it is. Our focus on safety, caring for teammates, and ensuring we all get home safe made the UNM Children’s Hospital a success. That’s The Jaynes Way. And it’s still at work today in every project we’re on.