Proactive Collaboration: How Early Technology Consulting Transforms Healthcare Projects

In today’s increasingly technology-driven world, the infrastructure of a healthcare facility must be designed with technology in mind from the very beginning. From ensuring efficient telecom room placement to accurately estimating costs, the inclusion of technology consultants early in a project can make the difference between a smooth, cost-effective design and a project plagued by inefficiencies and unforeseen expenses. Their expertise helps streamline planning, avoid costly surprises, and ensure that a facility is future-proofed for evolving technological needs. This article explores the key benefits of engaging technology consultants early in your project and the risks associated with delaying their involvement.

The Benefits of Including Technology Consultants Early

Core Infrastructure Alignment

Early involvement of a technology consultant ensures that a facility’s core infrastructure is aligned with the technology in the building. This collaboration provides predictable outcomes and ensures the project is delivered on time and on budget. Technology consultants benefit design teams in a few key ways.

Low-Voltage Responsibility Matrix: A technology consultant can establish roles and responsibilities early in the process, creating a low-voltage responsibility matrix. This ensures clients, architects, contractors, and consultants understand what is included and excluded from their scope, aligning the team and reducing uncertainty. Continuous engagement through the design process and coordination with the contractor team early on allows for the identification of scope gaps and better utilization of resources during the pending phases of work. Developing a low-voltage responsibility matrix creates accurate cost models for the entire project.

Accurate power and cooling requirements: Early engagement with the project allows the technology consultant to identify realistic estimated electrical and cooling loads for technology rooms, which helps the MEP engineers accurately determine the power and cooling needed for a facility, reducing the chance of the systems requiring significant redesign later on in the design phases.

Strategic Space Planning

Efficient technology room placement: Engaging technology consultants early in large-scale hospital projects allows them to collaborate with the core infrastructure team to optimally position technology rooms and identify cost-saving opportunities. A tool commonly used to achieve this is the Diamond Study. Utilizing tools like the Diamond Study (see the diagram below), technology consultants can provide options to the architect on where optimal telecom room placements would be, providing the following benefits:

• Minimizing offsets between telecom rooms: When technology rooms on each floor are aligned vertically throughout the building, the number of telecom rooms and cabling needed is reduced by minimizing offsets. Offsets can’t be completely avoided in large hospitals. Oftentimes, telecom rooms will have to be moved so they are not in the way of key areas like operating and radiology departments. However, these offsets can be planned early in the project, eliminating costly redesigns in later design phases.
• Sizing telecom rooms for growth: Technology is always changing rapidly, and can even change throughout the life of large hospital projects. Developing appropriately sized telecom rooms requires the designer to have extensive healthcare experience and understand the operational needs of the facility to forecast an accurate cable count, driving room size, technology room equipment, and provide space for future technology systems.

Having a technology consultant provide input on telecom room placement early ensures that the facility doesn’t end up with more telecom rooms needed to serve the floors. When you have too many telecom rooms, it adds cost to the project to build out additional telecom rooms, and the additional rooms take up space that should be used for other services.

Impacts on Delayed Egress: Technology consultants can also provide studies on the path of egress early in the design process. The quantity and locations of stairs and the path of egress through the various departments will determine which spaces can be locked, limiting access. How the paths of egress are planned and laid out in the building will have a massive impact on the stairs and fire life safety requirements. Coordinating this design with the architect early on helps design teams understand the security strategy of a building and the ramifications of whether a unit can be locked down, limiting access from the general public. It also impacts the number of card readers necessary for controlling access to a unit/department. If this is done incorrectly, it will require the use of delayed egress locking hardware, which has a significant impact on the functional operation of the healthcare facility. While delayed egress locking hardware is necessary at times, the design intent should be to include no delayed egress hardware in the project. When technology consultants are included during initial space planning, it will save the project team from creating a no-win situation of using disruptive, delayed egress door hardware, or leaving departments unlocked and vulnerable.

Cost Certainty and Estimation

Engaging a technology consultant early allows for their input in the cost estimation of a project, often resulting in more accurate figures. Projects benefit financially when costs are understood early. Technology consultants provide precise estimates for cabling, device counts, Wi-Fi access points, card readers, and more. Having an expert review ensures contractors price out the parameters and parts of a project correctly, which leads to better coordination during construction. When engaged early in the project, technology consultants can also help identify site outside plant (OSP) requirements, eliminating surprises on compatibility later in design.

Risks of Delayed Technology Consultant Engagement

Time Inefficiencies

When technology consultants are brought to the table early and can participate or lead user group meetings, it allows them to ask the questions needed and follow up in real time to fill out the requirements they need for design. Just relying on meeting notes from an architect is not enough. User group meetings provide valuable insights. Without direct participation, consultants often have to revisit end-users for more clarity, whose job isn’t to design hospitals but to care for patients, consuming additional time and effort. Technology consultants help streamline communication with various departments, ensuring design requirements are accurately captured without burdening non-design professionals.

Limited Building Flexibility

When technology room sizing is not considered early in a project, it impacts the building’s flexibility. If all the telecom racks are maxed out on “Day 1,” the building can’t support future growth. But you can’t just design for more. Realistic calculations and discussions around future technology initiatives are necessary to size for the building’s future. There is always going to be a need to add more later on. Following the minimum requirements often leads to telecom rooms that are too small for the owner’s actual needs.

Escalating Costs

Not having experts assess technology requirements early can escalate costs during design and construction. The significant areas often overlooked are insufficient site requirements and insufficient cable quantity estimates. If a site doesn’t have enough underground conduits or is not optimally placed, this will often lead to changes in design to support the building’s function later down the road. When contractors estimate cable quantities without really understanding all the systems’ connectivity requirements, they are typically underestimated, only to find out later that there is an insufficient amount of cabling and their initial cost estimates are too low. Partnering with a technology consultant early can aid contractors in providing more accurate cost estimates and cost certainty throughout the design phases.

Engaging technology consultants early pays dividends in a project

Integrating technology consultants early in a project is a strategic decision that pays dividends in efficiency, cost savings, and long-term scalability. Their involvement ensures that critical infrastructure decisions are made with a forward-thinking perspective, avoiding the pitfalls of misaligned designs, escalating costs, and inefficiencies. By aligning the team early and addressing both present and future needs, technology consultants play a vital role in the success of healthcare projects.

Want to learn more about how TEECOM can help your next healthcare project? Contact us via our website and start the conversation with one of our healthcare leaders.