Boston Children’s Hospital Gets New Outdoor Signs

When Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) determined its ongoing rebranding program – which covers BCH Boston, as well as BCH Martha Eliot in Jamaica Plain, BCH Waltham, and BCH Lexington – required new signage, Metro Sign and Awning was happy to oblige.

To begin with, BCH Boston initially contacted its existing sign vendor, Sign Systems Solutions (SSS), for help with this project. However, SSS quickly passed the call along to Metro Sign, asking us to do the actual surveying, fabrication, and installation of the new signs. (A different contractor works with BCH Peabody.)

In total, Sign Systems designed and we built ten new signs for the hospital operating company:

• One sign with dimensional letters set on a curved radius
• Three new sets of sign faces for existing two-sided “post and panel” signs
• Three new wall signs featuring dimensional copy
• New canopy material with graphics for a “peaked roof” style entrance awning
• One flat aluminum wall sign
• One large, internally illuminated wall sign

The largest of these was the illuminated wall sign. An impressive 11’4” high by 11” wide, we had to carefully crane it into position on the wall of BCH’s parking garage, 40’ off the ground!

Pulling Two All-Nighters To Get The Job Done

The City of Boston was happy to issue the Street Occupancy and Sidewalk Permits we needed to do the work, but to make the project even more interesting, they would allow us to work only during off-peak hours.

This unusual hours were OK with us because it made the logistics of handling such large, heavy signs less complicated by safety considerations for passers-by and street traffic. They were also OK with BCH administrators because the overnight hours are when the parking garage experiences its lowest volume of traffic.

Our crew good-naturedly accepted the need to work overnight, and went two days without their usual “beauty sleep” in order to complete the new signage installation. Despite the potential for problems, we completed the installation portion of the project safely and successfully.

We originally completed the survey work and offered BCH an attractive price quotation in February, 2013. Once we received the go-ahead, we did all the fabrication and performed the installation at the Boston and Jamaica Plain locations in September, then finished up at Waltham and Lexington in October, 2013 — before any Winter weather could threaten our schedule.

Although this four-location, ten-sign project was our first effort on behalf of BCH, their team and our team accomplished the necessary coordination and detail work without a hitch.

In point of fact, we very much enjoyed helping BCH keep up-to-date with its external look and visual appeal. Having spent time there, we have nothing but praise for the fine people at BCH who do such a great job of seeing to the health needs of so many of us in the greater Boston area.

Please take a look, right here, at our work for Boston Children’s Hospital.