A Digital Journal - San Francisco Public Works
In the Works
February 2025
Transforming an old City hospital building into a space for modern-day clinics and laboratories poses a compelling set of challenges — from meticulously choreographing the replacement of massive columns down to trapping the smallest particles of dust. In partnership with the Department of Public Health, Public Works is making sure the job gets done right.
FEATURE STORIES
Construction in a Health Care Hub Takes Surgical Precision
Public Works has been adding seismic upgrades and making improvements to laboratories and health care spaces across multiple floors of a 1970s-era building on the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital campus.
Public Works Engineer Steps Up When Disaster Strikes
Public Works chief structural engineer Ray Lui reported to the East Palo Alto headquarters of California Task Force 3 Urban Search and Rescue earlier this month for an urgent deployment to Southern California to respond to the aftermath of January's Palisades Fire.
#LoveOurCity
Sparks of joy and community pride permeated this month’s Love Our City: Neighborhood Beautification Day greening and cleaning event in District 7 neighborhoods.
Better Market Street Project
Hits Milestone
Phase 1 of the Better Market Street improvements project reached substantial completion on Feb. 27 – bringing shorter crossing distances for pedestrians, new street trees and more visible traffic signals to the downtown corridor.
A Clean Sweep!
Large operations are not new to us – with the City hosting two major events this month and buzzing in the spotlight, Public Works crews were front and center, keeping the streets and sidewalks looking good for residents and visitors.
Public Works engineer Joe Chin points to existing concrete sunshades along the building façade. Some will be removed as part of the seismic retrofit.
Construction in a Health Care Hub Takes Surgical Precision
Shielded by milky, zipper-lined plastic curtains and guarded by boxed devices measuring the air pressure, a quiet – yet vitally important – transformation has been underway at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital’s Building 5, deep in the heart of the crucial health care hub.
Under the direction and supervision of Public Works project and construction managers, architects and engineers, contractor crews have been adding seismic upgrades and making improvements to laboratories and health care spaces across multiple floors of the 1970s-era hospital building, located at 1001 Potrero Ave. Public Works is delivering the project on behalf of the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
But unlike conventional construction sites, the work at Building 5 is taking place in carefully monitored, air-controlled bubbles so dust and hazards can’t leak out into the surrounding working health care setting used by doctors, nurses and patients.
"This building is still jam-packed. There's a lot of patients that still come here every day," said Joe Chin, the Public Works engineer overseeing the massive makeover and managing the City's Public Health and Safety Bond Program. "It’s almost like the effort and preparation to do the work is even harder than doing the work itself."
Engineer Joe Chin helps oversee the makeover of Building 5 and manages the Public Health and Safety Bond Program on behalf of the City.
The projects are part of a bond-funded initiative – approved by voters in 2016 – to consolidate many of the outpatient specialty clinics into one place for patient convenience. Today, the various clinics can be found in different buildings on the sprawling campus or offsite.
The revamped clinics will be able to serve more patients in a safer, more welcoming environment with expanded space for direct care and support services. Updated technology, fire-safety and electrical systems, new furnishings and other upgrades also are on tap.
A rendering shows the new waiting area for the outpatient Dialysis Department.
And, paramount to the work, crews are retrofitting the existing Building 5 structure to make sure it can better withstand a strong earthquake. Much like police stations and firehouses, hospital buildings and clinics are critically important facilities in the aftermath of a calamity.
But delivering such an ambitious renovation in an active health care setting requires surgical precision and meticulous planning. And much of it starts with infection control, which means creating a barrier between the construction workspace and the rest of the hospital.
No speck of dust can escape.
The construction sites are set up to make sure no dust or hazards can escape beyond the workspace.
"We’re not even talking about something hazardous, like asbestos or lead, we’re just talking about standard drywall dust and dust from general construction," Chin said. "None of that can migrate beyond our work barriers."
With the help of a series of plastic curtains that zip shut like a camping tent’s entryway and large fans that suck air in and guide it through a HEPA filter, the workspace is kept isolated from the rest of the building. The setup creates what’s known as "negative air."
"It’s like a vacuum cleaner," Chin explained.
Generous plastic coverings and manometers measuring pressure create air-controlled bubbles for the construction work.
A so-called manometer, stationed outside the sealed workspace, monitors the pressure inside the construction site. The device takes and collects data and staff checks it every day, said Chin, whose team is embedded on The General campus.
And like a welcome mat in front of a house door, a sticky, rectangular pad on the floor collects whatever is on the bottom of workers’ boots as they enter and leave the site. "These are ways to prevent track out of dust," Chin said.
A powerhouse hospital
standing the test of time
The ongoing improvements at Building 5 represent the most recent evolution in the long history of San Francisco’s deeply rooted public health care system and mark the latest domino in an expansive effort to revamp The General campus and shore up its structures in the face of earthquakes.
The first official City hospital was built at the current Potrero Avenue location in the early 1870s.
Although the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906 destroyed more than 80% of the City and killed some 3,000 people, the hospital was spared. By the 1930s it was providing three-fourths of all hospital care for San Franciscans who couldn‘t afford payment.
Ambulance entrance on north side of SF General, Aug. 27, 1915.
San Francisco General Hospital soon became a pioneer in trauma care and in 1972 received its Federal Trauma Center designation, which it has held ever since.
Today, the 397-bed hospital – which moved from its old location in Building 5 into the newly-built Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center in 2016 – is the only Level 1 Trauma Center in San Francisco and northern San Mateo County. It treats more than 2,100 trauma patients every year and serves more than 100,000 people annually. It is also the largest acute inpatient hospital for psychiatric patients in San Francisco.
Construction of the new hospital and trauma center – situated right across from Building 5 – was financed by an $887.4 million bond, overwhelmingly passed by San Francisco voters in 2008. Public Works managed construction.
Construction of the new Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center finished in 2016.
As the health care epicenter of the City’s disaster response in the event of an earthquake or major crisis, the new hospital was built with a cutting-edge base-isolated foundation, among the most advanced earthquake-resistant designs known today. A moat-like perimeter gives the building room to move with an earthquake to minimize damage when the shaking starts.
Creating space – for safety
Seismic upgrades to Building 5 are a key component of the current project and work, too. But while the new hospital and trauma center was built from the ground up, revamping the existing seven-story building is trickier and takes a more tailored approach.
"We’re actually selectively going into different parts of the building and strengthening it based on a menu of options," Chin said.
One problem Chin and his team need to solve is that some elements of the existing structure are too close together, which puts more stress on them during an earthquake. To alleviate the issue, crews are adding a so-called seismic joint to allow for movement.
The effort represents the biggest, most disruptive piece of the seismic retrofit. Here’s how it works:
Though Building 5 looks like one cohesive structure, it’s actually two buildings. A small, existing expansion joint – measuring 1¼ inches – separates the two buildings.
A small, existing expansion joint separates the two structures that make up Building 5.
"That was designed in the '70s," Chin said, "and obviously, right now, based on what we know about seismology and the seismic technology and design, that 1¼-inch gap is not adequate. So what happens is – in a major earthquake – the top floors will start banging against each other and it’ll cause damages, severe damages, on the upper floors."
To prevent that from happening, crews are building a new 25-inch seismic joint into the building – from the third floor up to the roof.
That may sound relatively simple but it’s not. The building needs to be shortened by two feet to create space for the larger seismic joint. Crews also need to add new beams and columns to support the newly configured structure and only then can the old ones be removed.
"At the end of the day, the two buildings will have a two-foot separation that used to be 1¼ inches," Chin said.
Crews will add new beams and columns to support the newly configured building edge.
Plates will bridge the space so people won’t notice it and will still be able to walk from one building to the other.
To deal with other vulnerabilities, the project calls for beefing up existing columns through more concrete and rebar. In some areas crews are also adding what’s known as fiber-reinforced polymer or FRP. Chin likened it to putting on "high-strength bandages" to fortify the hospital.
In other locations, crews will bolt down steel plates to strengthen the area. Most of those will be on the roof level. And in some spots, crews are removing concrete sunshades, because they’ve been deemed to pose a potential problem during a large earthquake.
All told, there are 211 locations where crews have to do different types of seismic improvement work. To date, more than half have been completed.
‘Plastic is our friend’
Behind the plastic veils, work in several locations across Building 5 showcases the project’s progression.
On a recent February afternoon, for instance, the first-floor space that will house an expansion of the existing Psychiatric Emergency Services Department still revealed much of the bones of the structure: exposed pipes snaking along the ceiling, metal frames outlining individual rooms and multicolored cables dangling from above.
It took crews almost a year to demo the whole space and take it down to the building envelope.
Public Works engineer Joe Chin tours the construction sites at Building 5.
A series of color-coded markings along the floor, walls and ceiling hint at what lies beneath so workers can navigate existing electrical and structural systems – conduits, rebar, post-tension cables – without damaging anything. "This is actually a map of everything that’s in this slab that we’re trying to avoid," Chin said.
Markings along the floor identify existing electrical and structural systems.
In some cases, a protective bubble within a bubble is necessary. "Plastic is our friend," Chin quipped.
When crews need to do concrete work – which is known as wet work in construction parlance – there is concern about mold, Chin said. That’s where a secondary containment within the bigger sealed space comes into play to minimize the amount of mold that would have to be removed down the line.
Once completed, the Psychiatric Emergency Services project will add about 1,700 square feet for an expanded day room, patient services and secure work and support areas for staff.
In the basement, meanwhile, the new space for the City’s Public Health Laboratory – currently located in a seismically deficient building at the corner of Grove and Polk streets, right across from City Hall – has been coming together.
Cotton candy-colored fiberglass insulation is wedged between green drywall sheets. Rudimentary rooms are taking shape.
A rendering shows an office space in the new Public Health Laboratory.
The roughly 11,300-square-foot space will consist of administrative areas and labs that have to comply with various bio-safety classification levels. In some cases, for instance, that means the labs will have their own dedicated exhaust systems and operate in negative-pressure environments.
"So that there’s no way for nasty viruses to be able to escape that space," Chin said.
The Building 5 work also includes upgrades to the Clinical Laboratory on the second floor.
On the third floor, meanwhile, the relocation of the outpatient Dialysis Department already has been taking shape. Twenty-four new treatment stations are spread across 11,300 square feet.
A rendering shows the new Dialysis Department's treatment space.
But they, too, represent a microcosm of the myriad challenges on the renovation project. Crews had to go to great lengths to avoid conflicts with existing reinforcing steel and post-tension cables.
To Chin, the work on Building 5 in many ways represents the perfect storm of difficulties, complexities and obstacles: From making sure construction noise doesn’t impact a 24/7 onsite skilled nursing facility to navigating state-mandated reviews of any changes to the drawings and even dealing with existing hazardous material, such as lead paint and naturally occurring asbestos and mold spores in the soil.
"You name it we have it," Chin said of the flurry of factors to manage and juggle.
Nonetheless, he is proud to play a role in the hugely important project within San Francisco’s public health care system. Work is scheduled to wrap up in 2026.
"I really enjoy health care (projects) just because at the end of the day we’re doing something that is going to benefit our community," Chin said. "Yes, it’s challenging to get there, but the end result is something that’s going to be great for the patients (and the) doctors. And everyone’s always very appreciative of the fact that you’re going to have a better environment to treat sick people."
PUBLIC WORKS
BY THE NUM83R5
YEAR TO DATE (Through Jan 11, 2025)
831
POTHOLES
FILLED
895
TREES
PRUNED
75
CURB RAMPS
CONSTRUCTED
56
BLOCKS RESURFACED
700
TONS OF DEBRIS COLLECTED
Ray Lui (left) confers with a Task Force 3 colleague before heading out to the field.
Public Works Engineer Steps Up When
Disaster Strikes
On Jan. 10, just after 11 o’clock in the morning, as deadly fires continued to rage across thousands of acres in Los Angeles, Public Works chief structural engineer Ray Lui was at his desk some 385 miles away in San Francisco’s South of Market when he got a text:
"We are activated as a Type 1. Pls verify availability by 12:00 pm today."
Seven hours later, Lui reported to the East Palo Alto headquarters of California Task Force 3 Urban Search and Rescue for an urgent deployment to Southern California.
The next day he was on the ground, preparing for the grim work ahead.
Ray Lui, chief structural engineer for Public Works, first got involved in urban search and rescue after attending a talk on the 1995 Oklahoma City terrorist attack.
Lui serves as Task Force 3’s senior structure specialist, working alongside a team of highly trained professionals from the public and private sectors made up of firefighters, engineers, hazmat specialists, canine handlers, logistics experts and others who join together quickly to respond to disasters.
Officials set up the task force in the wake of the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. There are seven similar rapid-response teams in California and 28 across the United States – part of a national network under the auspices of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
With multiple fires burning at once in the greater Los Angeles area, Task Force 3 was assigned to the Palisades Fire, a brutally destructive blaze that broke out the morning of Jan. 7. Fueled by hurricane-strength Santa Ana winds, the fast-moving inferno killed at least 12 people and destroyed or damaged nearly 8,000 homes, businesses and other structures.
An apocalyptic scene awaited Task Force 3 when it arrived. The upscale coastal neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles – known for expensive homes, lush landscaping and panoramic views – had turned into an ash-covered landscape, scarred by an out-of-control inferno, that some likened to the lunar surface or a bombed-out war zone.
Deformed steel frames, singed stone retaining walls, incinerated vehicles, blackened tree trunks, charred utility poles, melted glass and dangling power lines hinted at what once was.
The brutal Palisades Fire spared few structures, leaving a large swath of the Los Angeles neighborhood in rubble and ashes.
"Unfortunately, we weren’t there for search and rescue,” Lui said. “We were there for search and recovery."
Working in tandem with a hazardous materials specialist, Lui was tasked with assessing whether a structure or an area was safe enough to access to search for human remains.
"My job as a structure specialist is essentially to be a canary," he said. If the structure or space was deemed safe, the recovery crews could proceed with their work.
Specially trained cadaver dogs went in first to sniff out potential human remains. They were followed by a team of first responders that would sift through the ashes. Anthropologists showed them what to look for: bones and telltale pieces of metal that, for example, once served as someone’s replacement hip or knee.
The cause of the Palisades Fire is still under investigation, but the fire zone had to be treated as a crime scene because arson is suspected. That means every step of the recovery operation had to be meticulously documented.
Lui and Task Force 3, which reports to the California Office of Emergency Services, were deployed for 1½ weeks, returning to the Bay Area Jan. 22. He slept and showered at a makeshift Palisades Fire operations center set up on the grounds by the Malibu Civic Center. In his sleeping trailer, he took a middle bunk, bumping his head every morning when he got up.
Ray Lui (second from left) and his search-and-rescue colleagues set up a base of operations on the grounds at Malibu Civic Center.
His team worked the daylight hours, starting with a morning briefing before heading out to the field. Counselors and even an emotional support horse were on hand for anyone who needed them. Lui did not. He said he is good at compartmentalizing his feelings.
Lui doesn’t know when he’ll be called up again, but he always keeps a grab-and-go bag packed at home – filled with toiletries and a few days’ worth of clothes.
At the task force headquarters in San Mateo County, he stores two other bags, one for his on-the-job gear – knee pads, gloves, helmet, duct tape, safety glasses, respirator, tape measure, caution tape and the like – the other with his uniform, towel, toiletries, flip-flops and extra socks and underwear. He keeps photos of his family in his wallet.
A handheld radio and radiation monitor, which he uses in the field, are issued at the base of operations.
It was after the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City that Lui, then a freshly licensed engineer in the private sector, became interested in using his professional skills to assist in search-and-rescue operations.
He completed a rigorous training program – and goes through annual refreshers. He has been dispatched to several disasters over the years, starting with the World Trade Center 9/11 terrorist attack in 2001. That was followed by Hurricane Irma in Florida in 2017; Hurricanes Lane and Olivia, both in Hawaii in 2018; and the North Complex Fire that tore through Plumas and Butte counties in 2020. He also went to Taiwan in 1999 to assist in developing search-and-rescue capabilities there.
Lui, a UC Berkeley graduate who started with the City in 2005 at the Department of Building Inspection before joining Public Works five years later as the Bureau of Engineering’s structural engineering section manager, gets to use a different part of his brain for the Task Force 3 deployments.
"As engineers, we like to be in control – we’re control freaks," Lui said. "But with these deployments, things are always fluid; you’re prepared but you have to be ready to respond quickly to changing situations."
Through this specialized work, Lui has built a strong network of professional relationships up and down the state that can prove beneficial if and when disaster strikes San Francisco.
"The key to a successful operation is the relationships," he said. "We’re here to help each other."
Community volunteers team up to plant street trees near Laguna Honda Hospital.
Flush with Success
#LoveOurCity
Sparks of joy and community pride permeated this month’s Love Our City: Neighborhood Beautification Day greening and cleaning event in District 7 neighborhoods.
The monthly Neighborhood Beautification Day events bring together volunteers and Public Works crews to make our communities more inviting.
The Feb. 8 Neighborhood Beautification Day participants planted trees on Hearst Avenue and Granville Way, added new plants to the Marietta Drive median, spruced up the Brotherhood Way Dog Park and repainted the schoolyard benches at Commodore Sloat Elementary School. Supervisor Myrna Melgar helped us kick off the day.
Neighbors weed, prune, mulch and plant the Marietta Drive median in the Miraloma.
Next month’s Neighborhood Beautification Day on Saturday, March 8, is all about trees as we celebrate Arbor Day. We’ll be planting more than 100 street trees in the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods and hosting our family-fun Arbor Day fair.
We’ll get the workday started at 9 a.m. at the Civic Center Secondary School, 650 McAllister St. We hope to see you there!
Cyclists ride down new and improved Market Street.
Better Market Street Project Hits Milestone
Phase 1 of the Better Market Street improvements project reached substantial completion on Feb. 27 – bringing shorter crossing distances for pedestrians, new street trees and more visible traffic signals to the downtown corridor.
Other upgrades include new curb ramps and street paving, street base reconstruction, decorative pavers and rebuilt sidewalks.
Public Works led the project from start to finish, providing project management, design, construction management, regulatory affairs and public affairs services.
New street trees were part of the Better Market Street improvements project.
The Phase 1 upgrades run along Market Street between Fifth and Eighth streets. The Better Market Street project stretches from Steuart Street to Octavia Boulevard. Construction of the future phases is dependent on funding availability.
With completion of all large-scale construction within the Phase 1 project area, we are now able to fully re-open Market Street to bicyclists. Public Works would like to thank cyclists, neighbors, business owners and visitors for their cooperation and patience during this project.
Better Market street upgrades included decorative pavers and rebuilt sidewalks.
A big thanks, too, to the Better Market Street Community Advisory Committee and our partner agencies that have been involved in Better Market Street, including the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, San Francisco Planning, the Office of Economic and Workforce Development and the San Francisco County Transportation Authority.
We hope you enjoy this new and improved stretch of Market Street.
Cleaning up after a parade is a major operation, capped off with a fleet of flusher trucks and mechanical sweepers following the route to get the last bit of trash off the roadway.
A Clean Sweep!
Tens of thousands of revelers lined the Chinese New Year Parade route that ran about 1.3 miles from the South of Market into Chinatown. After the last of the marching bands, lion dancers and colorful floats wrapped up and the ear-splitting firecrackers quieted down, Public Works street cleaning crews got to work.
We had 35 street cleaners on the ground, working a tightly choregraphed operation to clean up after the Feb. 15 event, the largest Chinese New Year Parade in the country. The team used brooms, rakes, shovels, blowers, flusher trucks and mechanical sweepers to pick up the litter.
They began their work at 8:30 p.m. and ended right around midnight. The overnight crew went in later to deep-clean the bleacher areas after the seating was removed.
Public Works also provided 12 blocker trucks, set up at key areas to protect the crowds from vehicles entering the parade route locations.
Public Works crews were on the ground day and night, keeping the City looking good.
In the weeks leading up to the Feb. 15 parade, Public Works crews power washed the Dragon Gate at Grant Avenue and Bush Street, spruced up the Broadway Tunnel, swept up litter, painted out graffiti and steam cleaned sidewalks and alleyways.
Lots of work took place before the parade, too.
A Public Works painter conducts the annual refresh of the decorative dragon light poles on Grant Avenue.
Public Works street repair crews conducted a pothole-repair blitz, filling 83 potholes and patch-paving another 427 square feet along the Chinese New Year Parade route to provide smooth and safe travel.
Our skilled craftworkers from the Public Works Paint Shop touched up the colorful dragon lamp posts along Grant Avenue and street inspectors ensured the pedestrian path of travel along the route was free of hazards.
The Lunar New Year celebrations were just one part of our special events roster this month.
Public Works crews provided extra power washing in the South of Market, where foot traffic was up during the NBA All-Star weekend.
The NBA All-Star Game landed in San Francisco this year, a big draw for basketball enthusiasts with an array of activities packing the South of Market, waterfront and downtown neighborhoods.
With the City buzzing in the spotlight, Public Works crews were front and center, keeping the streets and sidewalks looking good for residents and visitors.
Large operations are not new to us – they are part of our Operations portfolio and we carry out the work with pride and efficiency.
It’s great to see the momentum of San Francisco’s comeback building and these crowd-pleasing events help drive the progress.