“It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark.” – Richard Cushing

PDA’s lean-thinking healthcare experts guide the master facility planning process using service demand and customer service goals as benchmarks. Specialists in hospital and healthcare function complement architect and engineering teammates who address code, construction and design elements.

PDA’s organized process starts with team orientation and includes agendas and teaching elements to keep participants on message and in budget.

PDA’s multi-year capital asset management models provide practical tools for decision making when budgets force trade-offs. Functional statements are built to communicate strategy, process and sizing assumptions to clients’ design teams.

Master Facility Plan elements include:

Health Planning and Asset Analysis

PDA reviews strategic plans, leadership goals, Certificate of Need, market and health planning foundations along with the capacity and life cycle of existing capital assets. These are used with interactive models to establish functional goals, departmental relationships, size and flow of internal and external traffic, customer and staff relationships.

A capital model established early in the facility plan engagement is developed and tested throughout the process.

Tools include:

• Demand analysis
• Workload analysis
• Market trend analysis
• Customer service intent

Functional and Space Relationships

Each element of the plan includes functional performance statements, capacity goals and critical operational elements. Functional statements will be tested for patient centered care characteristics such as:

• Education and shared knowledge
• Involvement of family and friends
• Collaboration and team care
• Attention to social, behavioral, spiritual and clinical requirements
• Respect for diversity among patients and staff
• Accessible information

Departmental sizing models are used for business scenario analysis. Simulation and flow exercises test intra-departmental relationships, staffing cost issues and adaptability.

Capital Management and Project Sequencing

To complement space blocks and functional programs, PDA teams test the cost model, build interactive critical path schedules, and, where necessary, break the plan into affordable projects. Interactive capital asset models permit client to update the facility plan if conditions change.

PDA Master Facility Plans include:

• Strategic goals
• Sizing assumptions
• Functional statements
• Capital budget
• Flow diagrams
• Phasing Plan
• Adjacency and block diagrams

Other Facility Planning products:

Space Programming

• Sizing the project room by room from a library of sample templates
• Translating departments to rooms
• Review of functional adjacencies for operational workflow

Benchmarking and Analysis

• Comparison of costs to alternatives
• Estimates for long-term spending and work-load projections
• Prioritize capital planning projects

Process Simulation

Capital Asset and Master Facility Planning Experience