Digital Engineering can vastly improve the entire lifecycle of healthcare assets, from design and construction to operation. Not only does Digital Engineering facilitate project collaboration, clarify decision-making, and streamline project delivery, it affords cost savings and improves on-site safety during both construction and ongoing facilities management.
The design, construction, and long-term management of healthcare assets is subject to demanding and specific objectives such as: optimum health outcomes for patients, superior quality working environments for doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals, and maintainable optimized assets for owners. These objectives necessitate the use of industry best practices and cutting-edge technology and are enabled from the right execution strategies.
Digital Engineering techniques can be implemented at any stage of a project or during operations, but the highest influence on a project is during the design phase. By introducing Digital Engineering early in design, you’ll enable better data management and model control, improved safety outcomes, higher productivity and better decision-making through access to better information, faster.
By turning complex data streams into intelligent and context-rich models that are combined with strict governing processes and detailed workflows, several benefits can be realized:
Shrink the gap and save costs between construction completion and operation commencement
Digital Engineering delivers the greatest value when considered throughout the entire lifecycle of a health facility. While construction of healthcare projects is costly, operational costs quickly exceed those associated with the design and build process.
Accessing this value doesn’t require a full facility management solution integrated with a connected 3D model. The solution may be as simple as ensuring there is definition of data requirements that encapsulates everything the facility management needs for operations; being defined as early as possible. In this way, the right data is captured and progressively handed over to the facility management team. The facility management team then has the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the data and its intended use, throughout the construction process.
Plus, early involvement of the facility management team can help solve operational challenges before they become a reality. For instance, facility management teams can undertake ‘in-model’ testing of activities that require Elevated Work Platforms and specialist cleaning equipment to access atriums, roofs, and facades. These activities can be tested and streamlined to ensure they are as safe as possible.
In contrast, a model and data handover package that has had no initial input from the end users may be used intermittently or not at all. Failure to define and then utilize a fully intelligent 3D model and associated data set heightens the risk of a gap between construction completion and operation commencement. Operational delays can be expensive for healthcare asset owners.
Enhanced stakeholder collaboration, engagement and management of change
The use of Digital Engineering and a digital twin (a 3D representation of a built asset) to review, manage, and track design inputs and changes is essential to the success of any modern healthcare project. Healthcare projects involve a multitude of user groups, all of which need to review and plan their working environments and processes, as well as interactions between various departments. This process can quickly become unmanageable, causing design and construction delays.
The centralization of data in a digital twin ensures that all user groups have access to highly accurate, live information. The digital twin can be used to manage feedback, track changes, and improve transparency, accountability, and stakeholder engagement. Hence, the 3D model and systems available on the market can provide a robust mechanism for managing design and construction change to ensure an accurate as-built record handing over to operations.
Increased acceptance and utilization of the built environment
Virtual and augmented reality technologies deliver real-time, realistic, and technically accurate representations of complex designs. These representations improve understanding, communication, and stakeholder interaction.
By blending the latest augmented and virtual technology with engineering precision, a realistic and technically accurate representation of the project can be created. Available technology in the VR/AR market provides a low threshold to engage with 3D models and its associated complex data sets. Digital Engineering’s function within this realm is facilitating
Navigating through the model and immersing into the virtual or augmented reality scene, one can experience and interact with an area in the building as part of the approval process. This can be critical to the future acceptance, utilization, and experience of the built environment.
Enhanced coordination
By defining modelling protocols like creating exclusion zones, designers can place critical-to-life services into pre-allocated locations and run collision detection activities. With exclusion spaces incorporated into a project design from the outset, significant design changes can be mitigated, streamlining the entire process.
The design of healthcare building services and equipment can be enhanced using technology such as 3D modeling. This ability to visualize multiple scenarios is particularly important because equipment specifications often change between the design and procurement, and therefore layout often remains unknown during the design phase. It is extremely challenging to design a fit-for-purpose space unless all equipment has been finalized, which is unlikely in the design stage due to funding, equipment advances and updates.
Additionally, by implementing requirements like exclusion zones, as well as a clash matrix hierarchy the coordination process can be founded upon a rigorous but well understood practices. These requirements should be embedded into an engagement with contractors as early as possible to ensure delivery plans can be tailored to suit.
Modularization and Pre-Fabrication
The use of the digital engineering allows for rapid value engineering opportunities, leading to more innovative construction methodologies, such as modularization and pre-fabrication. By implementing Digital Engineering, a strategic approach to managing the integration of design, detailing and construction practices can be created that allows for techniques such as modularization and pre-fabrication. These techniques that are undertaken typically off-site in a controlled environment allow for a significant reduction of waste, increase efficiency and reduce labor and material costs. Modular construction can accelerate construction speed by as much as 50% and cut costs by as much as 20%, ultimately, delivering a safer, faster, and more cost-efficient construction process.
Increasingly, hospital projects are taking advantage of the benefits offered by preconstructed bathroom modules and modular surgical theaters, as well as the modularization of services such as those encountered in a lift core or during flue installation. Other components that can be pre-fabricated and or modularized are pipe racks, electrical conveyance runs and even structural framing components.
Create a healthy building where form fits function
The function of a hospital is not to house as many sick people as possible. It is to cure people as quickly as possible. Research shows that exposure to natural light in hospitals decreases patient length of stay and improves both patient and employee wellbeing.
Digital Engineering requirements can be embedded into contractor delivery requirements to provide specific 3D model outputs. For example, using 3D models technology, detailed sun studies can be undertaken and data utilized to configure ward and room layouts that optimize access to natural light. This data can inform the selection of materials based on thermal performance and shading requirements to optimize the year-round usability, as well as renewable energy sources that support more sustainable designs.
Also, 3D models and their in-depth data can also be leveraged to analyze the safest and most efficient egress routes in case of an emergency. To this end, operations can become more efficient through analyzing maintenance routines and mapping the suggested routes to take to specific equipment.
Save money and time with effective facility management
Efficiency and productivity gains in facility management are vital. Not only do they generate significant cost savings, but they also ensure an optimal built product. Perhaps most importantly though, the nature of services rendered in healthcare facilities (which are often critical-to-life) requires swift identification and rectification of outages.
When an appropriate Digital Engineering framework is implemented and managed, facility management teams have all the data needed to undertake swift repairs and planned maintenance. They no longer need to dig through filing cabinets for specifications and manuals to assess maintenance needs. With an intelligent model, facility management teams can review everything – work orders, service history, manuals, drawings – before making their way to site.
This functionality can be enhanced by connecting digital assets to the Internet of Things with live sensors. Facility management teams can then monitor systems remotely and adjust services from the office to maintain optimal performance. All potentially be connected within a digital twin environment.
As with all Digital Engineering deliverables, utilization of the 3D model for facility management purposes requires working backward from your end goal. It is important to establish standards for data collection, auditing, mining, and handover at the outset of the project.
