St. Louis Community College Repeatedly Chooses KAI Architecture & Engineering for Proven Excellence

After the success of the Center for Nursing and Health Sciences (CNHS) at St. Louis Community College’s Forest Park campus in 2019, KAI was again selected to design the CNHS on their Florissant Valley campus. Delivering both architectural and engineering design services, the state-of-the-art Allied Health Facility was designed to meet the job training and retaining demands of St. Louis area hospitals and healthcare system. It is also home to the college’s first bachelor’s degree.

At four stories and 100,000 SF, it is the first facility to offer expanded programs for the Dental Clinic, Nursing, LPN, Patient Care, Respiratory Care, Clinical Laboratory, Radiology Technologies, Diagnostic Medical Sonography, EMT/Paramedic Training, MA/PCT, and General Science Labs and Classrooms. It also houses simulator labs to prepare students for careers in emergency medical technology and paramedic technology. The facility and surrounding site is pursuing LEED Certification.

Additional features of the facility include indoor and outdoor student gathering spaces, classrooms expanding capacity for college’s nursing, dental hygiene and radiology technology programs, and classroom spaces for behavioral health support and deaf communications studies programs to support holistic aspects of healthcare and patients with additional needs. The mechanical systems tie-in to the campus central plant.

Navigating Engineering Design Edits Late in a Project

St. Louis Community College initially requested a “clone” of the Forest Park building for their Florissant Valley campus. Late in the design process, the client requested special ventilation systems for the organic anatomy lab—systems that were not included in the Forest Park building and systems we had not originally anticipated including in this design. Working quickly and collaboratively with our in-house architecture team, we were able to resolve the issue efficiently by adding the specific ventilation the client required to the engineering package.

Site-Specific Considerations

The new CNHS building is the tallest on the Florissant Valley campus. To accommodate the site’s natural slope, our architects designed the first floor partially below grade, using the topography to help reduce the building’s visible mass. The below-grade areas were ideal for housing the MEP systems.

Because of the building’s four-story height and location on a slope, additional infrastructure was needed. This included a domestic water booster pump to improve pressure, a fire pump, and a standpipe system—typically used in high-rise buildings—to ensure proper fire access and code compliance.

Central Utility Plant Study

During construction, the client authorized us to conduct a study of the campus’s central utility plant to assess its capacity to support both the new CNHS building and future expansions. Working within the constraints of the existing structure, we delivered a full report recommending $1.35 million in upgrades. These improvements were essential to optimize operational efficiency and ensure reliable utility service for both buildings.

Utilizing Technology for Peak Efficiency

To support the central utility study, we used Pipe-Flo, a hydraulics modeling program, to simulate fluid flow through the campus infrastructure. This allowed us to identify system flaws and inefficiencies. Additionally, we used Trane Trace 3D to streamline HVAC design by generating precise load calculations from the architectural model. This process also revealed discrepancies in how the building’s floors were modeled, which we resolved early in the design process—avoiding potential downstream issues.