Hermann Hospital
Houston, Texas

Project Overview
Lynne Randall was the Hermann Hospital representative responsible for working with the design team from Watkins Hamilton Ross Architects to develop the voice, data and video technology and cable infrastructure requirements and specifications for the new Hermann Pavilion, a $200 million, 800,000 square foot facility housing 229 patient beds. Lynne designed and wrote the specifications for the "hospital of the future" including the cable infrastructure for voice, data and video applications, wired and wireless voice communications, nurse call systems, data systems and telemetry. Lynne wrote the technology migration plan used to move entire departments, including the Emergency Room and Level 1 Trauma Center and LifeFlight dispatch center, Houston's largest LDRP unit. Additionally, the entire Hermann Children's Hospital, a 150-bed full-service dedicated children's hospital including the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and the Children's Pediatric Special Care Units.

Telephone Equipment Room Planning

Hermann Hospital and Hermann Children's Hospital, in the Texas Medical Center in Houston Texas, is a tertiary care center with a level-1 trauma center and a level-3 neo-natal nursery. Hermann's campus runs adjacent to Braes Bayou and the surrounding area is frequently flooded.

In the mid 1990's, Lynne Randall was Director of Telecommunications for Hermann and the Project Manager for the implementation of a new voice communications network, which included a new campus-wide cable plant and the migration of over 6500 users from a Plexar (central-office based telephone service) System to networked Nortel PBXs and a single voicemail system.

As a part of the planning process, negotiating for real estate for a new telephone switchroom and new wiring closets, was critical to the success of the project. As always, there was no free space within any of the hospital facilities that was suitable, and the only area that could have sufficient space carved out for a new telephone switchroom was in the basement of the oldest building on campus, next to the morgue.

Although it was argued that the basement, an area prone to flooding, was not a suitable home for a new $3M+ system, the battle was lost and the telephone equipment was relegated to the basement. In making the best of a bad situation, Lynne was still determined to protect the new system as much as possible. She worked with the Architect and the Hospital's Facilities Department to make the new telephone switchroom as flood-resistant as was possible. The switchroom was designed with an 18" raised floor and all of the cabling, both voice and electrical, was fed into the room through the use of overhead racks. No cabling was run under the raised floor; however, air conditioning ductwork was housed under the floor. As an additional waterproofing step, a 12" concrete curb was installed under the raised floor.

During Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, Hermann Hospital was forced to close and transfer all of their patients to other facilities due to the enormous flooding and loss of commercial power; however, the concrete curb and the 18" raised floor kept the telephone system and its batteries and rectifiers dry. The system provided vital communications within the hospital and to the outside world and ran until the batteries were drained. When commercial power was restored - the telephone system rebooted and worked - one of the few telephone systems within the Texas Medical Center that did not sustain significant damage.

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