Biomedical update: What’s it like to build a building even bigger than the arena?

If you think your job is complicated — perhaps you feel you have too many bosses to answer to or employees to keep track of — consider Stacy Christie’s position.

As the person responsible for overseeing construction of the new 350,000-square-foot, nine-story Wichita Biomedical Campus, Christie has to represent the interests of Wichita State University and its college of health professions, the University of Kansas Medical Center’s schools of medicine and pharmacy and WSU Tech.

Those are massive entities that don’t teach the same things and are working together in a way they never have before on a $205 million project in the heart of downtown that all of Wichita can watch progress — or stall — over the more than three-year development of its first phase.

Even as she was interviewing for the job of director of special projects facilities planning, Christie — an architect with more than 20 years experience — questioned if it would be too much.

‘My husband said, ‘No, it’ll just be like anything else. How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time.’ ”

Christie technically is a WSU employee, though it’s money from the development that is paying her.

“We wanted someone who could focus entirely on this project,” said WSU President Rick Muma.

Without ties to one school or another, he said Christie can be objective.

She said part of what makes this project special and should help it work well in the end is that the schools are bringing different ideas and skill sets.

“That’s part of the whole point of this building.”

However, she said they’re used to working in silos with different goals and processes.

“It’s just new and different and trying to understand how that goes together.”

Plus, it’s not like there’s one set plan that Christie simply has to execute.

“There’s still things happening in the background that aren’t figured out yet,” she said. “Just operationally, they don’t have all of that established yet. We’re still having meetings about operations and how things are going to come together.”

WSU will occupy the first four floors, and KU will take floors six through eight. The ninth floor is a mechanical penthouse, and the schools will share the fifth floor for a simulation center, but it’s not yet clear which entity will be responsible for running it.

It’s one of thousands of big and small decisions being made constantly.

“It just sometimes feels like bureaucracy, but it’s the way things work at a university,” Christie said.

Muma said he feels comfortable about where things are.

“We have a really good cadence of meetings.”

It’s kind of mind-boggling to an outsider, and maybe some insiders, too, but Christie remains positive.

“We get along great. It’s a good team.”

‘Right on track’

The steel of the Biomedical Campus’ first building is now mostly up — it should be complete by the end of August — at the southeast corner of Broadway and William next to WSU Tech’s National Institute for Culinary and Hospitality Education.

More than 200 auger cast piles support the building.

There’s also substantial progress on pouring concrete one floor at a time.

“We have poured a lot of concrete in this building,” Christie said.

Every time some is poured, Wichita’s Professional Engineering Consultants is on site to take some of that concrete back to a lab to break it and test it to see if it’s strong enough.

The firm is inspecting all of the building’s concrete, dirt and steel. PEC and Little Rock-based Entegrity Energy Partners are making sure the building is airtight and safe from water and other elements.

Concrete has been poured through the fifth floor, walls have been completed through the second floor, and duct work, plumbing and piping is mostly complete on the first floor and part of the second and third floors.

Fireproofing, where the underside of each floor’s structural beams is sprayed with fire retardant, has followed.

Exterior panel walls are now starting to arrive.

“There’s a lot of glass on this building,” Christie said.

Kansas City-based JE Dunn Construction and Wichita’s Hutton are constructing the building.

A lot of times in construction at universities, there’s a clear-cut bid approach where schools automatically take the lowest bids.

In this case, Christie said there was a process called Construction Manager at Risk that brought the contractors in early — even before she was on the job — to look for savings and efficiencies along the way, such as possibly saving thousands or even millions of dollars by using one product instead of another.

Christie said this process also saves times because construction could begin while the building was still being designed.

The contractors in turn take the risk of cost overruns.

The plan is for construction to be done by the end of 2026, then furniture and equipment can begin to get installed in time for the first classes to start in summer 2027.

“They’re pretty much right on track,” Christie said.

And on budget, too, Muma noted.

He said the building already is “an amazing structure.”

The project has 44 weather days built in, and 32 have been used so far. Christie said that was due to last winter’s snow and cold temperatures.

The building should be enclosed by November, so she said, “We’re still feeling pretty comfortable.”

Though as an architect Christie has designed a lot of buildings, that was not part of her role here. She’s in charge of getting answers from WSU and KU for Dunn and Hutton and for managing the budget.

The firms have lots of superintendents. Superintendents are in charge of two floors at a time, and then they have superintendents over them as well.

Christie said “they’ve strategically divided it up that everybody knows their role.”

She said there are “ways to break it down to make it not such a beast.”

“There’s no way to do this as one giant thing.”

A vast task

While the contractors are taking a lot of the bids, and WSU and KU see final bids for various pieces of work, Christie also is handling some of the bids.

For instance, she’s worked with furniture companies and is dividing the project among multiple vendors for specific functions, such as office furniture, classroom furniture and ancillary furniture, including lobby couches and cafe tables.

The project is so vast, even the vendors whose jobs it is to seek and win work don’t necessarily want the whole contract.

Christie agreed that “it’s too large for one furniture vendor.”

Think, for example, of all the different components that go into office furniture. It’s not simply desks and chairs.

Christie recently returned from a trip to Chicago where she and vendors toured nine showrooms over two days.

For most everyone, she said, the Biomedical Campus is “just bigger in scale.”

To put the size of the building’s 350,000 square feet into context, WSU’s new Woolsey Hall is 125,000 square feet, Intrust Bank Arena is 330,000 square feet, and the Ruffin Building downtown is almost 400,000 square feet.

Where one meeting on an issue might suffice on a smaller-scale build for a business, there might be five meetings for the same issue on the Biomedical Campus build.

Instead of a team of 20 people on one part of the project, there might be 100.

Then there still are those operational questions, such as who is responsible for building maintenance? Will that be outsourced?

Who’s going to run the simulation center? Each school currently has its own.

At the simulation center, there will be high-fidelity mannequins hooked up to computers so they can have voices. There will be mannequins to help simulate treating children, adults and pregnant women.

Christie said there also will be mock hospital rooms and a faculty monitoring room with video.

“It’s one of the more complex areas of the building.”

Some have wondered with such an emphasis on health sciences why the new campus has the Biomedical name instead.

Muma said he took his cue from other schools nationally.

He said Biomedical fits with a longer-term vision for the campus that encompasses a full range of disciplines, including research, in the biomedical sciences field.

Also, Muma said, “I personally wanted Wichita in the name because this is a facility for our community.”

‘A fair question’

Since it’s 2025, this may not be a fair question, but it still seems pertinent to ask: What’s it like for Christie to oversee a project made up of a heck of a lot more men than women?

“That’s a fair question, I think,” she said.

“There’s not a lot of women architects in Wichita. There’s not a lot of women in construction.”

For a time, Christie was the only woman at the construction site. However, Dunn has a female project manager at the site now.

“I’m used to being the only woman in the meetings and on the job site,” Christie said.

It doesn’t bother her — or the men, it seems.

“I’m not treated any differently. I really enjoy everyone I’m working with.”

Back at WSU, Christie’s boss, executive director of facilities planning Emily Patterson, is female.

And there are a lot of other aspects of the build away from the site that involve women.

“Just the amount of professional women that I’ve worked with on this project is really fulfilling to me,” Christie said.

The project in general is as well, she said, noting that it’s interesting and she appreciates the partnership aspect of it.

“I am very thankful for that.”

Patterson said in addition to all of Christie’s qualifications for the job, part of what got her hired is “she’s a true Wichitan and is really excited about the project.”

“She’s been promoting it so well,” Patterson said. “Just even on her own social channels . . . you can see how much pride she has in it.”

Though “it’s like anything else, (and) there are stressful times,” Christie said she might be interested in the same job for the second phase of the campus if and when it happens.

“Maybe ask me again by 2027.”

For now, she said she’s not losing any sleep over her assignment.

“No, I sleep pretty good.”

This story was originally published August 7, 2025 at 4:23 AM.