PHILADELPHIA—General contracting firm Balfour Beatty has completed its construction of the Pavilion, a $1.6 billion hospital for Penn Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Balfour Beatty worked in conjunction with designer PennFIRST, as well as other partners that included L.F. Driscoll, HDR, Foster + Partners and BR+A, all of whom worked under the umbrella of the so-called PennFIRST team.

The $1.6 billion project increases the overall footprint of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia by some 1.5 million square feet of space in the 17-story complex. The University of Pennsylvania encompasses over 200 buildings spread out across its 300-acre campus.

The university’s Perelman School of Medicine trains classes of nearly 2,000 students, and the nearby Penn Medicine Complex serves as the university’s main teaching hospital. The new Pavilion will directly connect the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine to the University of Pennsylvania’s hospital via both an underground tunnel and a series of bridges.

“From the early design phases of this project and through our consistent collaboration with our partners, Balfour Beatty has developed a strong and longstanding partnership with Penn Medicine through the delivery of the Pavilion,” Leon Blondin, chief executive officer of Balfour Beatty, said in a recent statement. “I commend our project team members and PennFIRST partners for their agility, adaptability and ongoing teamwork.”

In addition to the Pavilion, other upcoming improvements to the University of Pennsylvania campus include a new residential building, as well as improvements to its athletic field and renovations to various floors of the school’s Museum Coxe.

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