Saiful Bouquet is the structural engineer for the new Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) Southwest Tower, a 9-story 320,000 sf building with a curved façade on two sides of the building, a bridge to the adjacent existing parking structure and a patient drop-off driveway under the building at the 1st Floor. The new medical office building will house a variety of outpatient services, including an imaging department, an ambulatory surgery center, a rehabilitation gym, specialized clinics, and a research floor with a wet-bench laboratory. The building is under the jurisdiction of the City of Orange, with portions of the building meeting HCAI (OSHPD) 3 requirements.
The structural system consists of concrete slabs over a metal deck supported by composite steel beams supported by steel columns. The seismic force-resisting system for the tower consists of steel special moment resisting frames in the longitudinal direction and a dual system in the transverse direction consisting of both steel buckling-restrained braced frames and steel special moment resisting frames. The moment frames utilize the proprietary “SidePlate” bolted moment connections. The entire building is supported on a shallow mat foundation.
