Saving Time and Money for Healthcare Facility Owners

Saving Time and Money for Healthcare Facility Owners:

Why creating an owner asset registry with BIM eliminates the need for FCAs down the road

In Summary:

• BIM streamlines project delivery and can also avoid expensive FCAs down the road through better facility and asset data management.
• Defining lifecycle data of medical equipment , if implemented early in a project, can create a clean, accurate and complete owner asset registry that avoids FCAs and saves money in the future.

For owners, BIM can streamline project delivery with better coordination, as well as provide visibility into facility and asset data needed to plan maintenance programs and manage as-built records; which can help avoid costly, redundant facility condition assessments (FCAs) down the road. This can be especially pertinent for healthcare organizations that need to design, build, and operate safe and efficient facilities that meet strict regulatory and patient care requirements. So how can healthcare facility owners best utilize BIM while meeting regulatory standards? By identifying lifecycle data requirements and defining organizational standards to collect and maintain facility and asset data throughout all phases of a project.

What is Lifecycle Asset Data?

Let’s start by first defining what an asset is. An asset is pretty much anything that you own and can locate in space. This can be in the form of real property, a facility, a space or room or any type of physical element within a facility. Therefore, asset data is the information collected throughout development that describes the physical presence, state or history of that asset; such as its description, location, etc. at a point in time. Lifecycle asset data refers to any data that we want to capture throughout the life of a facility or asset, by whom was it documented, how it changed or evolved, and whether it was used to formulate any decisions.

Why Do I Need to Capture Asset Data?

Owners understand that making the right strategic asset decisions ensures all stakeholders are properly coordinated with the right information at the right time. As my colleague AJ Bridwell mentioned in his LOD blog post, there are two types of assets: high-touch service devices and big-ticket items. High-touch service devices are not necessarily expensive, but represent a volume of elements in a system, while big-ticket items include elements that are costly upfront and will require service down the road. It’s important to understand what data you need for which types of equipment, since certain elements of data aren’t necessary for all assets. For instance, desks are cost-effective, easily installed, and require minimum maintenance. However, rooftop units aren’t the same – aside from the size, capacity and price, the rooftop unit is directly involved in the environment, health and comfort of a facility. In this case, the asset data for our rooftop unit becomes even more important down the line when you hand it over to operations so that they have all the warranty, operations and maintenance data. We refer to most of these assets (both high-touch service devices and big-ticket items) as Furniture, Fixtures, and Equipment (FF&E). “More data is required for medical equipment because these elements impact how the healthcare facility can perform its medical services.”

How Lifecycle Asset Data Differs for Healthcare Facilities

Medical equipment assets within healthcare facilities are critical in delivering safe, practical medical and clinical services to patients. With many different regulatory authorities involved in the operations of healthcare facilities, medical equipment typically falls outside the typical FF&E umbrella. Often, more data is required for medical equipment than FF&E because these elements impact how the healthcare facility can perform its medical services. From an owner’s perspective, collecting lifecycle asset data for medical equipment can seem like an overwhelming task. Each asset serves a different and critical role. Take an intensive care unit, for example. Different room configurations are designed to meet specific medical requirements for the type of procedure conducted and patients served. And one ICU does not fill all – from CICU for cardiac services to NICU for neonatal services, each space serves a different purpose, with varying facility and asset requirements. As the owner, you need to document the height, width, depth, pricing, electrical connections, wattage, installation, of each light, magnifier, surgical table, and digital integration system. And this is just the different types of ICU’s, an entirely different school of thought must go into the creation of asset data for patient rooms, nurses’ stations, labs, and waiting rooms.

Collecting and Maintaining Healthcare Facility Asset Data

By defining and collecting lifecycle asset data early on in a project you will save time and money down the road, particularly by eliminating the need for FCAs to collect and analyze your asset data. Creating a comprehensive owner asset registry from the beginning of a project ensures that your asset data is clean, accurate, and complete for operational handover and subsequent management. One strategy to begin your owner asset registry is by identifying the critical assets required to meet the needs of your healthcare services in BIM, understanding the lifecycle data needs of those assets and ensuring that your project models have the expected information. BIM Assure allows you to analyze BIM using automated rules that check for quality, accuracy and completeness, saving enormous amounts of time, energy and effort. Interested in improving your facility and medical asset data quality? Visit Doug Sinclair during the ASHE Annual Conference in Indianapolis at booth 845 or reach out directly to schedule a meeting at the show.