BIM reduces waste only? Think again, it can bring revolution in Healthcare system also. Innovative BIM families reduce labour on the part of the care-givers and reduce sufferings for patients. :-

Sutter Health, the California Healthcare provider started thinking about the structure of their San Francisco market hospital in a new way, the moment they found that the building needed an updation of the seismic compliance after seeing the options for expansion in their Medical Center campuses at California Pacific, a site was selected for the new hospital. The site is in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood. The thought process was on to introduce BIM modeling in their upcoming construction.

Pride reflected from the voice of David Long, the senior program manager in Sutter Health and the project manager of the Cathedral Hill Project ed to be proud while giving the details of the new project.

Their challenge was to deliver something with a little difference. The task was to streamline the designing and planning procedure. In order to achieve their goals they needed to go an extra mile and apply a lean management procedure. The architects of the SmithGroup, Sutter Health and the general contractor HerreroBoldt zeroed in on Integrated Project Delivery. This procedure involves the contractors, owners, designers, trade partners in the process starting from its inception till the completion.

According to the Lean Construction Institute at UC Berkeley and Dr. Glenn Ballard, the team of the architects, engineers and the constructors had the sole aim to follow a certain lean principle. In the process the team relied a lot on BIM modeling and took the help of numerous BIM related software, like, Tekla Structure, Autodesk Revit, Autodesk Navisworks Manage ( specially for clash detection), etc.

Cathedral Hill hospital is probably going to become the first of its kind in California as it will be implementing the viscous wall damper system for seismic. Steve Peppler, the project director of Cathedral Hill hospital and one of the vice president of Smithgroup said that, the dampening system will help evading any kind of acceleration of the tremor during seismic. Apart from that, innovative BIM library will also be installed that the patients can get maximum relief from pain.

The construction world is going through a momentous change. A building is not the structure erected out of concrete and iron anymore. It has a life of its own that is needed to be taken care of, mainly for the sake of human safety. A hospital houses infirm, sick people. Proper planning prior to the structuring of the building can ensure their safety and well-being.

Relevant Link:
http://bimforum.org/2010/10/07/lean-principles-integrated-delivery-project-savings/