Apollo Surgery Center — Surgical Facility Expansion

Project Overview

Apollo Surgery Center is an ambulatory surgical facility at 375 S Wickham Road in West Melbourne, Florida, in Brevard County between Melbourne and Palm Bay. BEED Engineering provided mechanical, plumbing, and fire protection engineering design and construction administration for an 8,000-square-foot expansion of the surgical facility.

An addition to an occupied healthcare building has to match the existing systems closely enough to operate as one facility, while meeting the ventilation, plumbing, and life-safety requirements that apply to surgical occupancies. BEED’s role was the engineering design for those systems and construction-phase support after the documents were issued.

BEED later provided mechanical engineering for HVAC and control system corrections at the same West Melbourne surgical facility.

The Challenge

Surgical expansions are not ordinary commercial additions. The new area has to support clinical use, connect to an operating building, and stay coordinated through construction without treating the existing center as a vacant shell.

The work had to:

• Extend mechanical systems into the addition in a way that the expanded facility could heat, cool, and ventilate as one building
• Provide plumbing for the added clinical and support spaces
• Address fire protection for the expansion as part of the overall life-safety design
• Support construction administration while the existing surgical facility remained in use

Those conditions are typical of healthcare projects in West Melbourne and across Brevard County, where many clinical buildings grow by addition rather than by replacing the original structure.

BEED Engineering's Scope

BEED provided mechanical, plumbing, and fire protection engineering design services and construction administration, including:

• Mechanical engineering design for the expanded surgical facility
• Plumbing engineering design for the added clinical and support spaces
• Fire protection engineering design for the expansion
• Construction administration during installation

Electrical engineering was not part of this assignment.

Engineering Solutions

The mechanical design covered HVAC for the 8,000-square-foot expansion so the new area could be conditioned and ventilated as part of the surgical facility, not as a disconnected shell. Plumbing design served the added floor area with the domestic water, sanitary, and related piping the clinical occupancy required. Fire protection engineering addressed the expansion as an extension of the building’s life-safety systems rather than a standalone sprinkler or alarm layout.

Construction administration followed the design through installation. That phase matters on a healthcare expansion because equipment, ductwork, piping, and fire protection devices have to land in an occupied building and still match the sealed documents.

The later HVAC and control system corrections used mechanical engineering to address operating issues in the completed surgical facility, including how the systems were controlled after the expansion was in service.