DaVita is a Fortune 500 healthcare provider operating world-wide and is the largest provider of kidney care services in the U.S. The DaVita Central Business Office (CBO) is a new office building sited adjacent to the existing DaVita office building in Federal Way, Washington, creating an administrative campus. This new 160,500 s.f. office building is designed to meet LEED Gold. It provides a healthy and safe workplace for a potential 750 DaVita teammates. The project also serves as a regional conference and training center.
The program demanded large floor plates to address the growth on this site. We used centralized and perimeter daylight as well as a social atrium to lessen the perceived scale of the interior footprint. Interior social collaboration areas provide centralized services with staff work areas located closer to views and daylight. The exterior envelope is inspired by the surrounding evergreen trees and filters and distributes light into the office space.
DaVita and McGranahan teamed with Mortenson Construction and their primary trade partners early in design, bringing constructability and cost benchmarking into design conversations. We worked closely to create flexible spaces for both large and small teams which can grow and change over time while enhancing DaVita’s vibrant culture. We collaborated with Mortenson in executing design goals, using VR to study key spaces, streamlining construction, and delivering a project the team is proud of.
The construction of the project was well underway when the impacts of COVID 19 first surfaced in the spring 2020. After developing protocols to ensure a safe working environment for all tradespeople on the construction site, the team turned its focus on how to provide a safe and healthy environment for the teammates that would be moving into the facility at the end of 2020. We worked with DaVita and their furniture vendor to develop workstation components and layouts that supported proper distancing and transmission measures, and the teammate working groups were distributed throughout the floors to avoid over taxing common areas and shared spaces. The DaVita team is continuing to review furnishing placement and proper capacities of meeting rooms to promote safe distancing and overall environmental health for teammates in their new home.