By Frances Phillips
Senior Content Marketing Manager
Published by: Shaw Contract
Design Firm: Shepley Bulfinch
Architectural design firm Shepley Bulfinch transformed Tucson’s Banner University
Medical Center (BUMCT) into a nine-story clinical tower that expanded and elevated the patient experience at the nationally recognized academic medical center. Shaw Contract was specified as a flooring provider within the project.
When the hospital reported a flooring wear issue in 2019, Shepley Bulfinch and Shaw Contract acknowledged that it presented a maintenance operations disruption and collaborated to seek the best flooring outcome at BUMCT.
Utilizing the expansive Shaw Contract testing lab, the teams identified a product that would resolve the flooring issue at BUMCT. Through an integrated partnership, Shepley Bulfinch and Shaw Contract demonstrated that an architecture and manufacturer collaboration positively leads to industry-wide change, shaping the future of floor durability testing in the healthcare industry.
Terrain II 20 MIL (LVT 0454V)
Collaboration targets common interiors issue
The 2012 renovation of the Arizona Medical Center created a newly revitalized learning and research hospital, now known as Banner University Medical Center (BUMCT). Shepley Bulfinch specified Shaw Contract as the hospital’s primary flooring provider. This nine-story, 670,000 square foot building addition elevated the patient experience and positioned the center as a leader of quality care for the community. In the nearly 10 years since the expansion, BUMCT is now ranked by U.S. News & World Report in the top 50 hospitals nationally for specialty care areas including geriatrics, nephrology and urology.
In 2019, Shepley Bulfinch learned that flooring in a BUMCT waiting area scratched, resulting from a long-standing healthcare industry disconnect between flooring requirements and
healthcare furniture standards. LVT flooring required industrial strength felt protection to maintain a warranty; however, felt glides are undesirable in a healthcare environment because they can harbor dirt and particles that eventually scratch the floor. BUMCT determined that the best trajectory was to revisit how furniture and flooring perform together in a healthcare space.
Recognizing that floor scratching presents an avoidable disruption to hospital environmental services staff and that flooring aesthetics can negatively impact HCAHPS*
scores, Shepley Bulfinch collaborated with BUMCT to resolve the unexpected challenge. The firm engaged Shaw Contract to target this healthcare industry issue.
Shaw Contract, a brand of Shaw Industries, determined that the flooring industry standard of industrial strength felt protection on hard surfaces in healthcare was not an ideal long-term solution to guard against scratching.
Shaw Contract tested BUMCT’s hard glide furniture with a variety of resilient flooring in its floor testing lab. The extensive testing process assessed the LVT topcoat durability against
repeated scratching and rolling load performance present in heavy traffic commercial spaces such as hospitals
Terrain II 20 MIL (LVT 0454V)
Data establishes performance standard
The BUMCT test experiment led Shaw Industries to develop a repeatable and transparent methodology, the Repetitive Traffic Scratch test (RTS), establishing the standard in which
resilient flooring performs across commercial environments. RTS scientific data rates LVT on the change in the flooring appearance after laboratory scratch testing. This data, available on Shaw Contract resilient product specifications, enables designers and end users to confidently specify resilient flooring for heavy traffic commercial applications.
For the BUMCT project, RTS testing determined that Shaw Contract Terrain II, a heavy commercial wood visual LVT, offered the highest scratch performance. Terrain II features the proprietary top-coat finish ExoGuard+, which provides superior durability and resistance to scratching and abrasion. Since the installation, BUMCT has not experienced scratching or abrasive wear in the hospital waiting area with Terrain II LVT.
Shepley Bulfinch and Shaw Contract’s integration demonstrates that design collaboration with a solutions-oriented manufacturer can result in a partnership that excels beyond the initial project intent of creating a beautiful and durable healthcare space. Through this collaboration, the teams removed performance barriers to ensure the BUMCT clinical tower elevated the patient experience with quality care and further developed a healthcare flooring performance standard that expands to a wide range of healthcare and commercial environments
*HCAHPS: According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) is a U.S. standardized, publicly reported survey of patients’ perspectives of hospital
care designed to produce data about patients’ perspectives of care that allow objective and meaningful comparisons of hospitals on topics that are important to consumers. The reporting creates new incentives for hospitals to improve quality
of care and enhances accountability in health care by increasing transparency of the quality of hospital care provided in return for the public investment
