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BY ANTHONY WALKER The design/ build delivery system serves the healthcare industry well. Since a design/ build construction company is not just an architect or a contractor, hospital owners engage in decision- making with the same leadership from the very inception of the process through its completion. This is especially helpful with expansion and renovation projects. All participants work for the same goal, which positions a project for long-term success. The fi rst step is identifying the hospital's real challenges. Board members and C-suite administrators meet with designers as they ascertain the right project goals. Competent project team leadership ferrets out and accurately labels the organization's "pain points:" the places where hospital staf members feel "pain" due to poor operational structure or simple inef ciencies in the hospital building design. Project designers interview salient staf members (chief of nursing, facilities manager, etc.), as well as fl oor staf members, who will likely be valuably candid in one-on-one settings. Designers spend extensive time directly observing patient and staf fl ows in order to understand the existing facility inside and out, in order to identify optimal hospital layout planning. Engineers should also evaluate the existing equipment, both medical (e.g., headwalls, surgical lights, radiological setup) and non-medical (e.g., HVAC, electrical system, generators, boilers) and should quantify operational ef ciencies. Determining true needs All of this enables designers to help owners determine true needs over wants, and to prioritize the major facility problems; a hospital's needs and desires always outweigh available resources. Of course, a "want" in some facilities is a "need" in others. Code compliance, licensure and patient safety always stand out as needs. Staf ef ciency is more of a need in rural small hospitals, but it should always Decisive partnerships, decision-making in renovation and expansion projects The Woods Soldier Family Care Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado is a 21,296-square-foot addition used to relocate the administrative functions for Evans Army Hospital. The project is a two-story freestanding addition connected by a second- story walkway. Real Problems, Right Solutions 54 Medical Construction & Design | SEPTEMBER /OCTOBER 2015 | MCDM AG.COM