Sean Murphy – University Hospitals

The sub-basement of University Hospitals‘ newest planned oncology center sits below grade, yet the building was deliberately rotated so that patients receiving chemotherapy can look out floor-to-ceiling windows at a creek winding through the surrounding wildlife. That single detail—a subtle act of design with significant human consequence—captures precisely how Sean Murphy thinks about his work and the people it ultimately serves.

“We’re always mindful of who our patients are,” says Murphy, director of construction services for University Hospitals. “We’re thinking about folks getting chemotherapy, sitting in chairs for a long time.”

It is a perspective shaped by two decades in the field, and it informs everything Murphy oversees as he leads a freshly internalized construction department through a period of aggressive capital investment and deliberate organizational change across one of the largest health systems in the country.

A foundation in the field

Murphy came to construction the way many in the industry do—through family. His father introduced him to the work early, and what started as hands-on exposure became a genuine calling. He found value not only in the tangible results of completed projects but in the collaborative nature of the industry itself, a quality that would define his leadership approach decades later. After earning a degree in economics from Ohio State University, he built his career methodically: more than a decade in various construction roles, including over five years at AECOM and over two years at Sodexo, where he served as University Hospitals’ owner’s representative.

That last role proved pivotal. When UH decided to bring its construction function in-house, Murphy was the natural choice to lead it. He joined the health system in October 2025, stepping into the challenge of building a structure where informality had previously reigned. He set about standardizing project delivery, implementing management platforms like Procore, and shifting from an at-risk contracting model to design-build. Involving contractors from the earliest stages of a project reduces surprises later and, as a result, change orders—a perennial source of budget overruns—have declined meaningfully. The approach has also sharpened budget discipline and brought greater transparency to a portfolio spanning the entire system.

Navigating the healthcare environment

Murphy spent time earlier in his career working on K-12 schools and athletic fields, and the comparison to healthcare construction is instructive. While the fundamentals of managing schedules, labor, and materials transfer across sectors, hospital projects carry a layer of operational complexity that most other building types never encounter.

“I would think that 80 percent of construction is the same, 20 percent is different project to project,” he says. “Working in healthcare is so different—the infection control stuff is what makes everything unique.”

The around-the-clock nature of hospital operations compounds those challenges considerably. Crews cannot simply shut down a wing and work; they must coordinate every move with clinical staff to ensure that patient safety is never compromised, and active research programs add another layer of sensitivity to the environment.

“The crucial challenge is being able to blow out a wall while on the other side is a patient who is incredibly sick,” Murphy says. “We also have a lot of research equipment that is sensitive to noise and vibrations—we have to be mindful of that.”

University Hospitals is one of the most prominent health systems in the region. Founded in 1866, UH serves patients through an integrated network of 23 hospitals, more than 50 health centers and outpatient facilities, and over 200 physician offices across 16 counties in northern Ohio. Its flagship academic medical center, UH Cleveland Medical Center, is affiliated with Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and consistently ranks among U.S. News & World Report’s top-performing hospitals. The system employs more than 30,000 people and has more than 3,000 active clinical trials and research studies underway.

Investing in oncology, imaging & pathology

Against that backdrop, Murphy and his team are executing on three major fronts: oncology, imaging, and pathology. Each reflects a broader organizational strategy of consolidating leased spaces into owned facilities while expanding clinical capabilities in high-demand service lines.

The oncology work includes a $40 million project to renovate a four-story medical office building and add two new linear accelerators to enhance treatment capabilities. The project came in significantly under budget and is trending to open on time—an outcome Murphy attributes to early contractor involvement and strong third-party partnerships. Imaging investment centers on a ten-year equipment replacement program with Siemens and GE, cycling out aging CT and X-ray machines while renovating the surrounding rooms. Pathology represents the system’s most ambitious near-term capital commitment: a $100 million project relocating 80 percent of UH’s pathology and lab work to an off-campus, four-story building outfitted with new air handlers and specialized clinical infrastructure, with completion targeted for the third quarter of 2027.

Prioritization never happens in a vacuum. Murphy and his team sit annually with system administrators and clinical leaders to identify the highest-value investments, then stress-test those priorities against financial realities that have grown more constrained across the broader healthcare industry.

“We have to balance and see what makes sense—bring in our business planning unit and look at the ROI on these changes,” he says. “We have roughly $1.5 to $2 billion in deferred maintenance, and we’re operating in healthcare without the same funding that existed years ago.”

Building a team for the long term

While major projects command significant attention, Murphy is equally focused on the people executing them. He is working to break down silos between construction, facilities, and real estate—departments that have historically operated on parallel tracks—while guiding his team toward professional credentials, including ICRA certification. The goal is to elevate team members into genuine leadership positions, not simply fill project management roles.

That mindset extends to how UH approaches its broader built environment. With more than 250 locations across the region, the system is investing in standardized suite layouts, room configurations, and material and color selections to reinforce a consistent patient experience regardless of which facility someone enters. Many of those locations were acquired, creating ongoing challenges with signage and wayfinding as the system works to unify its brand identity across a sprawling geographic footprint.

In a market that includes the Cleveland Clinic and MetroHealth, Murphy understands that the quality of UH’s facilities has direct implications for recruiting and retaining the physicians and providers the system depends on.

“We try to make the spaces the most comfortable for our workers,” he says.

That commitment—to patients, to providers, and to the teams doing the work—drives Murphy forward every day. In a health system as large and complex as University Hospitals, construction is never just construction. Every project carries clinical weight, every design decision touches a life, and Murphy navigates all of it with the care and precision the work demands.