Children’s Minnesota iMRI Surgical Suite

To further their mission to champion the health needs of children and families, Children’s Minnesota decided to consolidate multiple life-saving services and technologies into their Minneapolis hospital. Requiring a trusted team with robust inpatient hospital expertise, they enlisted the A+E and construction services of Ryan Companies to revitalize their neurosurgery suite and install a pediatric hybrid intraoperative magnetic resonance imaging (iMRI) machine.

From Day One, we championed Children’s Minnesota’s “Kids First” mentality. With dozens of vendors and contractors involved, clear communication and thorough planning were critical. Our team conducted numerous site visits and meetings with hospital staff to effectively understand their operations, goals and needs to develop a design and construction plan.

We immediately implemented a series of thorough disruption avoidance plans, ensuring the pediatric hospital could remain safe for current patients over the eight phases of construction. To maximize the safety of the NICU above and the emergency department below, our construction team established a negative air space to mitigate airborne contaminants, and we enlisted an expert acoustician to help mitigate noise. Every member of the team demonstrated a high level of conscientious flexibility to preserve the quality of patient care, adapting our schedules as needed, often completing tasks on nights and weekends.

At the heart of this life-changing endeavor was the pediatric hybrid iMRI—a revolutionary system equipped with both moving-scanner and moving-patient MRI technology in the same surgical space. Weighing more than 16,000 pounds, the installation of the equipment was a tremendous challenge—not only was the second floor iMRI suite surrounded by active operating rooms, the NICU and the ER, the closest point of access on the exterior of the building was abutted by a parking ramp. The hospital was originally designed with a “knockout” panel created with control joints on the exterior, made specifically for loading or removing large equipment (like an iMRI) out of the building without disturbing the rest of the building façade. Thanks to working with numerous vendors as “one team,” Ryan construction opened the knockout panel of the exterior wall, allowing a crane to lift the iMRI directly into the space to successfully install the iMRI—which is now being used during surgeries to save lives.