Regions We Serve

Gladys McCoy Health Department Headquarters

Overview

The new Gladys McCoy Health Department Headquarters building is a 9-story building located in Portland’s Old Town neighborhood. Designed to serve the community as a resilient 80 year building. Gladys McCoy HQ will allow the Multnomah County Health Department to service the most vulnerable individuals in the community. It houses over 500 employees in its multiple floors of administrative offices, specialty clinics, central laboratory and pharmacy. The first floor will also serve as the community command post for use during a public health emergency.

Construction

During construction of Gladys McCoy HQ, extensive exterior framing was designed to help support the brick and stucco apertures and break-shapes that connected outboard of the exterior walls. To build this series of asymmetrical break shapes at various locations, it required complex sub-framing to support the undulating shapes. Adding to the challenge; none of the break shapes from one location to the next were the same shape or size. This meant that unique shop drawings had to be composed for each individual shape. Attempting to build these shapes onsite aboard exterior platform lifts would have been a logistical nightmare. Because of this the project team decided that framing the shapes offsite was the only viable option to keep the project on track.

To accomplish the task the team measured the window openings surrounded by the protruding shapes and then transferred a layout with the exact dimensions to a wall in the prefabrication facility. Carpenters then proceeded to build each shape in place. The constructed shapes were shipped to the jobsite, loaded onto platform lifts and placed one by one into their exact location on the exterior walls of the building.

Additionally, WPI designed and manufactured a total of 48 prefabricated exterior wall panels complete with framing, sheathing and pre-sprayed weather barrier to be flown in and installed at the rooftop.