A Unified Process Approach to Healthcare Project Delivery: Synergies between Greening Strategies, Lean Principles, and BIM

Abstract

The healthcare industry is one of the most significant built environment markets today with over 120,000 buildings in the United States. In spite of the recent decrease in construction spending, it is estimated that healthcare construction will rise dramatically in the next 10 years. Therefore, there is a great opportunity for improvements to be made in this market segment. Healthcare facilities are amongst the most complex facilities to design, construct and operate. Green healthcare can enable improved clinical outcomes, lower operating costs, energy consumption and water use. Lean principles emphasize whole process optimization through collaboration, continuous improvement, elimination of waste and a focus on delivering the value desired by the end-user (patients). Patients are a very special category of end-users, and their needs and health are the highest priority. The complicated healthcare building delivery system can benefit from focusing on the value adding activities and eliminating the wasteful ones. Building Information Modeling (BIM) can be very beneficial for healthcare projects because of the complexity within the building systems in terms of indoor environmental quality, cooling and heating loads, and also the large quantity of medical equipment. This paper examines the synergies existent in the healthcare construction market segment in terms of greening strategies, lean principles and BIM during the programming and early design stages of a project to provide a combined benefit greater than the sum of their individual benefits. A conceptual model is presented to improve healthcare facility delivery. Additionally, a research plan for future work is outlined and explained, and conclusions are drawn.