PLANNING FLEXIBLE DESIGN
Phasing Equipment choices Modular space planning Standard modular rooms Shared Utilization IT/communication Internal and external adjacency requirements
Structural systems Mechanical, electrical, and communication systems.
Integrating flexibility into the planning and design process will support the efficient and effective use of space and allows for healthcare facilities future growth and change.
DESIGN StratEGIES For GrowtH aND cHaNGE Healthcare facilities are designed for a lifespan of more than 30 years. During this life, demands on facilities will change significantly. Unforeseeable advances in medical technology, unpredictable national and local demographic changes etc. Make the scale and scope of the demand on any individual healthcare facility over its lifetime highly unpredictable. Furthermore, a good value-for-money healthcare facility needs to be flexible, to allow effective adaptation to changing circumstances. This needed flexibility could be interpreted in different aspects, categories and cycles.
FLEXIBILIty aSpEctS The recognition of the rapid change is key to a successful planning and design that is able to cater for both today’s and tomorrow’s requirements. This rapid change recognition will be reflected in the planning and design stages in three aspects of which are: Adaptability: The ability of a building to meet shifting demands without physical changes Convertibility: The possibility for construction and technical changes with minimum cost and disturbance Expandability: The ability to increase (or reduce) the size of a building.
FLEXIBILIty catEGorIES In addition, flexibility could be seen in a different way. largely depending on how fast one would expect to use the switch. Operational: Operational flexibility could be used on a daily or weekly basis. Wards that can accommodate different types of patients allow hospitals to deal with suddenly changing demand patterns Tactical: Tactical flexibility is somewhat slower. Examples of tactical flexibility include
‘shell space’, and flexible design of footprints of the different departments Strategic: Strategic flexibilities are the options that we may in fact only exercise years from today. The effect of such strategic flexibility is often a substantial increase of the lifetime of the healthcare facility.
FLEXIBILIty cycLES As change could occur over different time cycles, it is useful to consider these cycles separately when establishing how flexibility will be achieved: Short-term: The need to accommodate change over the daily, weekly or monthly timetable; this can be achieved by using spaces for different functions at different times of the day, week or month Medium-term: The need to accommodate new or changed services for a period of one or two years, with minimum internal re- organization or building works; this is reliant on flexible use of space but it may require a greater degree of physical change to the room such as changing furniture or finishes Long-term: The need to accommodate significant new or modified services, which may require building works and a lead-in period; there may be a need to extend the building after completion of the project, to accommodate new services or to extend those that it already contains. Finally, despite the fact that flexibility has
always been a traditional preoccupation for planners and designers, it has a definite impact on healthcare facilities ability to sustain the future at a reasonable cost. One of the first, and arguably most important, steps towards more flexible healthcare facilities is to stop asking for accurate forecasts of the future. Instead planners and designers ought to ask a wide range of possible futures. Given such a range of uncertainty, it is the planner and designer’s challenge to build facilities that can cope with any kind of future. HB
REFERENCES References available on request (
magazine@informa.com)
Hospital Build Issue 4 2011
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