DPR’s Atrium Bed Tower Project
The Atrium Bed Tower project is a 1.1 million square foot, 12-story replacement hospital that DPR Construction is building, in a joint venture partnership with Rodgers Builders, on an active healthcare campus in Charlotte, North Carolina. The facility includes imaging and emergency departments, operating rooms, a dedicated mechanical floor, and a basement supporting central sterile and mechanical systems.
Delivering this complex project requires coordinating design decisions and field execution across a large team of designers, builders, and future occupants, all while maintaining ongoing hospital operations and managing system tie-ins.
Over 1,000 people are active on site each day, while architects, engineers, and clinical stakeholders remain involved throughout the project. Coordinating that level of activity typically requires check-ins, jobsite walkdowns, and updates from the field. DPR uses Touchplan to bring that information into a shared plan the entire team can see and work from.
Managing Complexity Across Stakeholders and Systems
Construction is progressing alongside ongoing hospital operations, with work tied into existing buildings, infrastructure, and campus systems.
“The big differentiator for this project is the number of stakeholders,” says Kyle Welch, General Superintendent at DPR Construction. “From program managers to owners and surgeons, everyone has input into the design, the construction, and the execution.”
Many stakeholders work off site but still need visibility into project progress and decision timelines. Touchplan gives them direct access to the plan so they can see where construction stands and when they need to make decisions.
“Our owner’s team and vendors, no matter where they’re sitting, can see where construction is at and what their decision timeline is in real time rather than relying on updates from the contractor or other stakeholders,” Welch explains.
Similarly, the design team uses Touchplan to coordinate design deliverables and understand how design progress affects upcoming construction activities.
Connecting Design, Planning, and Execution
DPR began using Touchplan in the project’s design phase and has continued use through construction, creating a consistent planning environment across phases.
Architects, engineers, and the construction team use the platform to coordinate sequencing, align on permitting and deliverables, and understand how design decisions relate to field execution. The plan remains active and is updated as work progresses, maintaining alignment as conditions change.
This approach reinforces DPR’s Lean planning practices, including co-location, cluster groups, and big room sessions, where cross-functional teams plan work together in real time and align around a single, coordinated plan.
That alignment carries into daily operations through short huddles, where teams review constraints, confirm commitments, and update the plan as conditions change in the field.
Coordinating Work and Avoiding Conflicts
With more than 65 trade partners working on site, teams need visibility into where work is happening and how schedules overlap.
“One thing prior to Touchplan that we struggled with is getting trades to understand what else is going on in the area,” says Welch.
Touchplan makes other teams’ work visible during planning, allowing trades to see overlapping activities and adjust sequencing before conflicts arise. This gives teams a clearer understanding of how their work fits into the broader project.
Planning Critical Work and Tracking Performance
The project includes multiple planned shutdowns and system tie-ins that require coordination across teams. Touchplan is used to map these activities in advance, making upcoming work visible across the project.
The team also uses the platform for daily and weekly planning routines. PPC and variance reports provide a consistent view of performance across approximately 30 superintendents.
“We use PPC reports to understand who’s doing what they said they were going to do, and variance reports to understand why we’re not,” Welch explains.
These reports help the team identify issues early and adjust planning based on actual performance.
Touchplan also helps capture impacts across the project.
“It’s easy to say it rained and we lost a day. What you don’t see is where crews are managing temporary protection and other work gets missed,” Welch says.
By connecting those impacts to specific activities, the team can better understand how conditions affect the work and address issues before they compound.
Turning Visibility into Execution
On the Atrium Bed Tower project, design, construction, and stakeholder input must be coordinated across a large team while work continues on an active hospital campus. Without a shared plan, keeping teams aligned depends on meetings, jobsite walkdowns, and constant updates from the field, all of which become more difficult to manage on a project of this size and complexity.
DPR uses Touchplan to bring project information into a shared planning environment the entire team can work from, reducing the need to coordinate through separate conversations and updates.
As Welch explains, “I can get a clear picture of the project in about 30 minutes instead of spending three hours on job walks and check-ins.”
That visibility helps teams stay aligned as the project progresses toward substantial completion in May 2027 and continues to run ahead of its target date.
