RESPEC PROJECT

The RESPEC Infrastructure business unit provided civil, electrical, and structural engineering for this new, $43 million, 95,000-square-foot clinic. The Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC) Health Department provides comprehensive health services to 14,000 Alaska Natives living in Fairbanks and 24 Alaska Native villages in the Alaskan interior. TCC replaced its existing clinic, which operated in leased space at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, with this new clinic on an undeveloped site across the street from the hospital. Because TCC’s mission is to support interior Alaska Natives, the clinic needed to provide a culturally sensitive and appropriate setting for its clients while maintaining clinical excellence. Important elements in this effort were to first preserve and celebrate the local natural environment in the site design and landscaping and then connect the clinic’s interior spaces with the outdoor surroundings as much as possible.

RESPEC’s civil engineers were tasked with ensuring that the client’s vision, as expressed in the landscape architect’s site plan, could be implemented in a way that met the desired Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver standards, floodplain and wetland permit requirements, and local parking codes. Access to the clinic from Cowles Street required designing new turn lanes and a mid-block crosswalk with pedestrian-activated flashing beacons to protect staff and patients traveling on foot between the hospital and the new clinic. The project achieved LEED Gold certification.