Patrick (left) with members of the LF Driscoll team on-site at the Vagelos Innovation Laboratories.
For over two decades, Patrick Burke has been a central figure in the enormous growth of Columbia University’s renowned medical facilities. Since 2022, he has held the title of Vice President for Facilities Management, Operations and Planning for the University’s Irving Medical Center. A graduate himself of Columbia’s School of General Studies and a member of the University’s Board of Advisors, Patrick also holds a Master of Architecture degree from Princeton University and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.
BTEA President Elizabeth Crowley spoke with Patrick about the landmark projects the University currently has underway and what the Association’s members should know who hope to work on projects with Columbia in the future.
BTEA: You have played a key role in building so many incredible facilities at Columbia University. What are some of the projects that really stand out for you as career achievements?
Here at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, the collective focus can be summarized by several words: Discover, Educate, Care, and Lead. Given this orientation, I would say that over my 23 years of service at Columbia there are probably three projects that particularly stand out: one a clinical project, one a research project, and one an educational project. On the research side, we designed and built the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, which included a BSL-3 [Biological Safety Level 3 lab] which was two floors in the Hammer Health Sciences Building. The project was immensely important because it was just weeks before the onset of COVID that we commissioned and opened the facility, and immediately it became one of the most important places for the city to help advance the understanding and cure of COVID. You could never have imagined a better alignment of time in terms of the completion of a bio-containment facility and the need to have such a robust facility in which to provide a safe platform to conduct life-changing research.
On the clinical side, I would say ColumbiaDoctors at 51 West 51st Street. We took the entire third floor of 1290 Avenue of the Americas with Vornado which became our New York City flagship facility for clinical care. In this one location we brought together the full breadth of ColumbiaDoctors, along with state-of-the-art radiology facilities in an incredible location central to so many New Yorkers and just steps away from Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We opened that project just a few months after Superstorm Sandy on January 4, 2013. We started building that facility in March of 2012 and from day one, it was a flat-out “drag race”. Because of Sandy, Local 3 electricians were called away for several weeks to restore power across countless homes, hospitals, and business, and then it took an enormous refocus to get this project done—and everybody stepped way up! The months of November and December were like nothing you’ve ever seen, and it all came together incredibly well. Right from the onset, there was perfect orchestration between Caldwell Wingate, our construction manager, and the labor unions to get us open on time!
The third project, on the education side, was the Vagelos Education Center. That was a 14-story, 110,000-square foot, new building that we finished about nine years ago. For that, we ran an international design competition, and we selected Diller Scofidio + Renfro right here in New York. DSR is one of the most progressive architects of our time and was duly responsible for the transformative work at Lincoln Center and the Juilliard School. We hired them to do the design work with Gensler and then we brought on Frank Sciame and his highly capable team to lead the construction. It was an immensely important project for us to “get right”, as this building houses one of the most progressive simulation facilities in the country and absolutely sets the standard for medical education for learning in the next century here at Columbia.
BTEA: For our members who have not worked with you in the past, what would you say you’re looking for in contractors and other partners in the construction industry when you’re assembling a team for a project?
We spend a lot of time talking about the notion of “team” and the importance of the “team”. The team not only includes vital in-house stakeholders, but it’s absolutely driven by the architects, engineers, contractors and subcontractors. What we’re looking for is really two-fold: technical competency and a commitment to safety. The facilities that we build are highly technical and we operate in an immensely technical industry, so it’s very important that everyone possesses the requisite competencies. With this, I might add a footnote germane to the BTEA’s members: The unions bring the apprentice programs to the table, so that every tradesperson is able to show up on our job sites ready to go each and every day. The electricians, the mechanical contractors, everybody, brings a technical competency starting from day one, which is one of the great benefits I’ve seen from the various apprentice programs.
As for safety, the people in the construction industry work in a hazardous, risk-filled environment. You want people to go home to their families at the end of the day. This, by far, is our chief goal.
BTEA: What are some of the facilities that you are focused on building at the moment?
We are building the new Vagelos Innovation Laboratories, which is a 10-story, all-electric research building. It’s the most progressive and, what we believe, is the first, all-electric research building in New York State and, possibly, in the United States. This building is immensely important, because it sets the standard that goes hand in hand with Columbia Plan 2030—the university’s sustainability initiatives—and New York City Local Law 97. Local Law 97 sets very transformative goals for all of us and how we build and make heat and hot water. Research buildings are 100% “outside air” and they are tremendous consumers of energy, so creating a system (and creating the technologies) to use electricity to make heat and hot water is really at the forefront for us. L.F. Driscoll is the construction manager and they’re doing an extraordinary job. They’re setting steel up on the 10th floor right now. Floors 0 through 7 have cast in place concrete. We’re going to have the project completed in about 18 months. It’s a very important initiative for setting the standard for the next century for life sciences here in New York City and for Columbia University.
BTEA: Given a new administration in Washington, what is your outlook for the industry?
We, in the construction industry, always face headwinds. Whether it’s the cost of energy, the cost of money, material pipelines, Superstorm Sandy, the 2008 financial crisis, or even the pandemic. What’s important here is that everybody continues to be resilient, to be optimistic, and to take a long-term perspective. I think if we maintain this sort of perspective and continue to plan and address the intense challenges of aging infrastructure and realize that we need to continue to build new, then we will continue to be the most desired global place to live, work and learn. All said, the biggest problem remains… funding.
BTEA: What are the projects Columbia has in the planning stages that are most exciting to you?
For about a year and a half now what we’ve been working on is the life cycle analysis and a strategic facilities master plan for Columbia University Irving Medical Center. The medical center was established in 1928 and simple math will tell you that we’re a couple years shy of our centennial. With this, we have a host of very old buildings that are in need of intensive infrastructure modernizations. So, how do we go about that, how we do the retrofits, how we build the infrastructures to support new fit-outs, and how we do the infrastructures to dovetail with an evolving Local Law 97? These questions are at the core of our infrastructure master plan and how we map out our engineering projects over the next 10 years.