Industry News

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Agilent Technologies has awarded a facilities management contract for all of its properties to Glendale-based Johnson Controls. The five-year contract includes mechanical, electrical, plumbing, operations and maintenance, project management, building fabric maintenance and general services for Agilent’s 17 million sf of owned and leased properties in thirty countries. Agilent manufactures scientific and analysis equipment.

Centennial Medical Center, a 118-bed hospital in Frisco, Texas, will open in June 2004. A subsidiary of Tenet Healthcare Corp., the hospital cost approximately $125 million in construction and other costs.

PRA International, a clinical research company, broke ground in late April 2004 on a 101,000-sf facility in Lenexa, Mo. The facility, sited in the Renner Ridge Corporate Center, is expected to reach completion in approximately one year. PRA International designs and coordinates clinical drug trials locally and around the world.

Tampa General Hospital has selected  Skanska USA Building to provide construction management services for a $120-million expansion project. The project’s construction value is estimated at $65 million. Comprised of a four-story addition over an existing surface parking area, the 280,000-sf project will provide a new emergency department and operating rooms, a new women’s center, a new cardiovascular center, and a new intensive care suite. To support the increased infrastructure, the central energy plant will also be expanded.

Xcyte Therapies has broken ground on a new $4 million manufacturing facility in Bothell, Wash. The Seattle-based biotech will manufacture its most advanced product, Xcellerated T Cells, in the new facility, which could make enough T Cells to use in clinical trials beginning in 2005. The plant will potentially manufacture T Cells to treat up to 18,000 patients annually.