Facility Design Project of the Month

Each month, FE&S spotlights a project worth talking about, with in-depth coverage from concept through completion including a kitchen equipment floor plan.

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The Central Kitchen at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore

"Since the space dedicated for the central kitchen as well as the multideck parking garage was already built, our approach in developing an efficient layout centered around three major points of service: delivery of products, distribution of prepared food, and waste management," Khouw continues. "The location of the two service elevators dictated where we would locate our central dry and refrigerated storage. The point where finished products are distributed to various locations throughout the hospital grounds is dictated by access to the towline, used to transport prepared food in hot/cold insulated carts to multiple points of service. Finally, soiled trays and other waste products returning via the towline are received directly near the warewashing and trash-holding area. The design ensured that soiled products will never cross and possibly contaminate food-preparation and production areas."

The entire central kitchen sits below grade under a multideck parking garage, which was built as part of the master plan for the new towers and campus revitalization. It is accessible to the rest of the Johns Hopkins campus via a series of tunnel connections and the programmable towline system, which carries carts with dirty trays and dishes from the buildings to the kitchen, transports bulk food to the older kitchen in what is called the "historical" part of campus, distributes bulk food to retail and catering operations, and delivers other items such as linens and medical supplies.

Working in a prebuilt space required some manipulation of the area. "A crawl space was created by raising the entire kitchen floor by approximately 16 inches from its base foundation," Khouw says. "This crawl space allowed all the utilities, including plumbing, electrical and gas connections, to be run from below."

"The ceiling heights were a challenge," says Roberta Hofmeister, project manager for Porter Khouw Consulting. "For instance, one refrigeration manufacturer had to come in to fit the equipment into the space."

In addition, a single-duct chase was designed to run all exhaust ventilator ducts out of the kitchen space and through eight levels of a multideck parking garage. "We didn't have a choice about this because there was only one shaft in the original building design," Hofmeister says. "But it was an engineering challenge because we didn't want the horizontal run to be too long."

Food-Safe Handling of Ingredients

Food and supply deliveries come to the loading dock on a floor above the kitchen. Staff load pallets of products onto an elevator bank and take them down to the basement level and place them into a staging refrigerator in the bulk walk-in complex or a dry-storage room. "A lot of process planning addressed economies of scale and safety to make sure we can handle food in safe environments from the moment it is received, through the production process, and until it is served," Dorsey says.

The entire walk-in complex comprises nine compartments, which have unsecured and secured areas. Only staff with the appropriate credentials can access the secured compartments. "The warehouse manager controls all bulk storage and the release of items to the dedicated day-storage areas," Dorsey says. "This allows us to control the quality and security of the food items."

Before production in the temperature-controlled (35 degrees F) produce-prep room begins, a manager requisitions the necessary ingredients from the manager in charge of the bulk-storage refrigerator. In the prep room, which resembles a large commissary-style system, the flow begins with staff preparing produce using a trim table, vegetable-washing system (1,000 pounds of spinach per hour), dicers (1,000 tomatoes per hour), choppers for onions, carrots and peppers, and peelers for melons and cucumbers. Staff use a bagger for packaging the finished products, which they store in the finished produce compartment. Other staff can requisition the prepped produce for garde manger, which takes place in another production area in this central kitchen. Staff can also requisition products for the other kitchen in the historical area and for satellite retail locations.

"We've done a lot of analysis to be cost effective, not only for the main campus but for smaller facilities as well," Dorsey says. "Eventually we will also be able to ship products to our smaller hospitals in the system, which will help them reduce overall costs and expenses."

Prepping Garde Manger

In the temperature-controlled garde manger area, staff use production sinks, a food processor, mixers and slicers to assemble chicken and tuna salads, slice meats, and prepare other cold items. Some of the products used in garde manger come from the food bank that holds items made using the cook-chill system. What's more, to further increase efficiency, the wrapping and packaging equipment here places cellophane around packages for grab-and-go items.