UMMC Children’s Hospital Expansion

Jackson, Mississippi

Burns Cooley Dennis, Inc. (BCD), was honored to be part of a team working for the University of Mississippi Medical Center to facilitate a critically needed expansion for the “only hospital in Mississippi specifically dedicated to the care of babies and children” at its Jackson campus. Construction for the $180 million project began in 2018 and was completed on time and under budget in 2020.

BCD provided geotechnical design and construction value engineering and confirmation on specialty piles for this lifegiving project.

Pertinent project aspects:

• heavily loaded seven-story tower structure and attached multi-level parking garage
• located immediately adjacent to an existing hospital building
• foundation and site work challenges for the design and construction team due to the presence of highly expansive Yazoo clays
• hundreds of specialized 24-in. high-capacity auger cast piles never before used in this area
• specialized crawl space design, site-specific seismic testing, and construction of a specialized soil nail wall were required