Medical Construction & Design

JAN-FEB 2015

Medical Construction & Design (MCD) is the industry's leading source for news and information and reaches all disciplines involved in the healthcare construction and design process.

Issue link: https://mcdmag.epubxp.com/i/452795

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 50 of 62

The notion that building design signifi cantly impacts healthcare outcomes has been strongly supported by a growing body of research. Rec- ognizing this, more healthcare facility owners view building design as one of the key contribu- tors to quality and ef ciency and search for the built environment solutions that best support organizational goals. Evidence-Based Design is increasingly used in the design practice. However, facility owners encounter dif culties in determining the best design solutions, often as a result of not clearly communicating key orga- nizational goals and expectations to design teams. Owners rarely consider a structured evidence-based process to evaluate design proposals in an objective and transparent manner. In 2012, an empirical design evalua- tion process was developed and used in the selection of the design, build, fi nance and maintenance team for the Interior Heart Surgical Centre — a 14,162m2 three- story addition to the Kelowna General Hospital in British Columbia, Canada. From the facility owner's perspective, the purpose of the new evaluation process was to drive more value through healthcare design by better communicating key operating metrics and targets to designers, incentivizing designers to optimize high-priority design parameters in a structured way, and using research to increase objectivity and transparency in design evaluation. From a much broader perspective of improving health- care environments and reducing healthcare costs, the process is groundbreaking in that it is among the fi rst to use an evidence-based approach in a formal way to identify the optimum design early in the process, prior to award- ing contracts. This empirical evaluation method could be widely applicable to healthcare construction projects using dif erent delivery methods in any location. Empirical evaluation process The design proposals for IHSC were evaluated against two types of requirements: compliance specifi cations and scored elements. The latter requirement dif erentiated the new empirical method from more traditional evaluation processes. To provide incentives for bidders for innovation and op- timal design solutions around the scored elements, a fi nan- cial credit for each proposal was calculated using a point system established by the facility owner based on research, the anticipated reaction of designers and a maximum of total credit. A total of 100 points was distributed among the scored elements according to relative contributions to operating savings based on available evidence. To make the process more transparent and objective, all compliance specifi cations and scored elements (including Finding the best healthcare building design By Mike Marasco, Leslie Gamble & Xiaobo Quan – THE – ROLE – OF – EMPIRICAL EVALUATION 46 Medical Construction & Design | JA N UA RY/ F EBRUA RY 2015 | MCDM AG.COM

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Medical Construction & Design - JAN-FEB 2015