Safety First

New Offices Provides Space and Security for BCBS

by Neal Singer

Bradbury Stamm and Dekker/Perich/Sabatini are rapidly completing the new four-story office building for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico. The building will provide light and airy office and storage space within the unique, ship-shaped building.

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Like a billboard, the four-story Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico administration building sits at nearly a right angle to Interstate 25, the city's main north-south highway.

Designed by project architect Bill Sabatini of Albuquerque-based architectural firm Dekker/Perich/Sabatini, the 115,000-sq.-ft. building with its long horizontal lines also resembles a ship -- broad in the middle for entry doors, security checks, and elevators, but tapered at each end.

The narrowing effect provides maximum natural lighting opportunities to those who inhabit office spaces within.

"Light can travel 30-ft. into a building without difficulty," Sabatini said of the design.

To help make natural lighting a reality, the second to fourth floor of the building is constructed almost entirely of tinted, insulated glass.

"There's framing horizontal and vertical but no other wall," said construction project manager Dan Lyons of Albuquerque-based general contractor Bradbury Stamm Inc.

Window overhangs minimize the unwanted warming effects of sunlight in summer. A middle panel employing ceramic white screening on glass reduces sunlight entering below the overhangs and aesthetically emphasizes the stable horizontal lines of the building.

The building's top floor features exposed girders and a ceiling slanted upward towards the outer wall. "The idea is, so the creative [marketing] people expected to work here don't feel they're in a box," says Sabatini.

In other areas where natural light is not an issue, stucco atop a foam-based insulation system sits over sheathing and metal studs.

Move-in date for the $22 million structure, which broke ground last September, is December 1st.

Dekker/Perich/Sabatini designed the building in collaboration with ZPD+A Architects LLC of Chicago for owner Health Care Service Corp., also of Chicago.

In addition to its interesting approach to lighting, the building maintains an unusual combination of aesthetics with security.

For example, the property's two-story garage is unnoticeable to those passing by on the freeway. Instead, the garage's eastern side forms a long, decorative one-story wall that hides the cars parked behind it. The wall also acts as a retaining structure for the project. From the western, lower "backstage" side, both the under and upper stories of the garage are visible to employees.

Providing similar passive security, the building proper has staircases that offer not only wide-angle viewing but also high visibility to those using them. Both views and visibility are enticements to stimulate employee use, said project lead architect Matt McKim of Dekker/Perich/Sabatini. High visibility of employees using stairs to those outside the building means that dark corners are eliminated.

"People feel safer because other people can see them," McKim said.
Secondary intents are to save energy by lessening elevator usage and to promote better health.

Because the structure will house an extensive collection of Blue Cross and
Blue Shield's medical records, security goes beyond the passive and includes closed-circuit TV throughout the building. An optical card reader in the building's single-entrance lobby does not need to have an identity card presented to a scanner but can read the card wherever it may be carried by the employee.

"The security in this building isn't cheap," McKim said.

Also unusual for New Mexico is a raised access floor installed throughout the building, Lyons said. Six-inch steel pedestals arranged in a grid hold flooring
panels six in. above the actual concrete floors.

"It's more expensive to build this way, because it adds an extra step in the construction process," Lyons said. "But it adds versatility to the floor space of the building because the owner can remove panels, change floor spaces and add cubicles at will."

The two-floor system meant extra difficulties in construction. "We had to get a certain amount of work done overhead first," he said, "because you don't want to be running your motorized lifts over the access floor," Lyons added.

Most of the upper floors were constructed with the same flooring system and required the same caution, he said.

What was difficult for Lyons made life easier for electrical project manager Tom Statzula of Albuquerque-based B&D Industries Inc.

"A raised-floor building is easy to maneuver, easy to work with," Statzula said.

"There's a lot of glass in this building but it doesn't affect me, besides making the building look neat. Our electrical is run under the floor and in the ceiling.

There's nothing here we haven't faced before that's not simple to do."

In addition to wiring the lighting and power outlets, B&D Industries brought wiring to the building's fire alarm, environmental and access controls. The false floor will make future access to wiring cable a simple matter.

One problem on what seems to be a smoothly run job occurred when two large customized air-handler units slated for rooftop installation arrived without controls already mounted on the units, said project assistant Shasta Smith of Albuquerque-based Miller Bonded Inc., which handled the mechanical part of the job.

"Because the factory didn't mount the parts it's being done onsite," she said.
Smith added that the extra work has not set back her company's work on the project, Smith said.

Key Players

Owner: Health Care Service Corporation
Architect: Dekker/Perich/Sabatini; ZPD+A
General Contractor: Bradbury Stamm
Engineers: Bohannan Huston; Cosentini Associates; Dekker/Perich/Sabatini
Electrical: B&D Industries
Mechanical: Miller Bonded

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