HOSPITAL DESIGN


FM team plays key role in Women’s Hospital design


Bill Algeo, a building technologist at Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg, explains how the HSC’s Facility Management Department played a key role in providing input and expertise for a redevelopment project that is seeing the creation of a new Women’s Hospital in the Canadian city, located in the state of Manitoba.


Designed with patients and families in mind, the new Women’s Hospital at Health Sciences Centre (HSC) Winnipeg will be the city’s most comprehensive facility for women’s healthcare when it opens (anticipated in the Autumn of 2019). The 400,000 ft2


building will


include 173 beds, and feature a family birthing place that includes a state-of- the-art labour and delivery unit, as well as a neonatal intensive care unit. It will also have private space for oncology and palliative care patients.


HSC’s Facility Management (FM) Department has been involved in the Women’s Hospital redevelopment project from the earliest stages of design. This integrated approach is now common practice for new-builds at HSC. The benefit is that all stakeholders are allowed to provide real-world responses so that changes can be made early on, reducing the risk of costly amendments at the later design and construction stages. For instance, FM provided feedback from users in existing HSC buildings so that design shortcomings could be avoided, such as the use of a single thermostat to control two or more spaces with different occupancies.


Drawing and specification stage FM staff had the opportunity to review and comment at each drawing and specification stage. The department provided input on the inclusion of electricity and water meters to observe consumption, and the number and location of direct digital control (DDC) points to monitor, control, alarm, and diagnose, building systems remotely. Products, equipment, and methods – proven over years of real-life experience, and included in in-house master design standards – were also shared with the design team. This allowed for competitive


The new Women’s Hospital at Health Sciences Centre Winnipeg will be the city’s most comprehensive facility for women’s healthcare when it opens next year.


pricing without compromising quality. Product selection is based on low maintenance, high reliability, accessible technical support, and an appealing lifecycle. Once the project was well underway, a shop drawing review was carried out by FM staff to ensure that the specified products were provided, and no unapproved substitutions were made.


Earliest stages of design


By being involved at the earliest stage of design, project specifications reflected the Facility Management Department’s need for integrated commissioning from the very start of construction, and necessary spare parts, training, and installation-specific operations and maintenance documentation, not the typical sales literature ‘filler’ material. In addition, equipment numbers and addresses were assigned as part of the centre-wide preventative maintenance


This article, published here in slightly edited form, first appeared, entitled ‘A Collaboration of Efforts’, in the Fall 2017 issue of the CHES magazine, Canadian Healthcare Facilities. HEJ wishes to thank the Canadian Healthcare Engineering Society, the editor of Canadian Healthcare Facilities, and the magazine’s publishers, MediaEdge, for allowing its reproduction here.


24 Health Estate Journal August 2018


programme. This is critical for maintaining systems that support 31 buildings spread across 4.5 million square feet, tied together with two central energy plants and a network of passenger tunnels.


Internal guidance


Facility Management requested, as an extra budget line in the project, a building system design intent manual (BSDIM) for the electrical and mechanical systems. This document is produced by the design engineers, and provides a narrative of how the systems should work, assumptions made, and modifications that can be applied at a future date. This information is not only invaluable for system set-up and operation (as control sequences are rather vague), but it also provides designers tasked with making future modifications with a clear picture of the existing systems’ capabilities and limitations.


FM staff used the building system design intent manual and control sequences to create equipment and building system test sheets. These test sheets, coupled with the direct digital control system contractor’s ‘in-out’ results and graphic shop drawings, are used to


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