A Multi-disciplinary Approach to Evaluating Healthcare Facilities

Francesca Reale and Luca Marzi
Department of Technologies for Architecture and Design
Universita` degli Studi di Firenze, Italia
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The experience we are going to show here represents the synergic work of researchers coming from different cultural extractions: bioengineers, architects and physicians. The Monitoring System (called MonLAB) wanted by Careggi Hospital (Florence, Italy) together with University of Florence is supervising the process of deep rethinking of the hospital itself, started in 1999 and scheduled to end in 2010. To do this, we developed many procedures and ICT tools to achieve these main goals: time and cost monitoring, critical moments prevision and alerts generation, real-time control of hospital evolving estate in terms of beds, ambulatories, deposits, clinicians rooms, technologies and more.

Brief description: MonLAB has developed a variety of tools to support the different professionals involved in the transformation of the healthcare district of Careggi during the phases of control and planning of the design solutions that can be summed up in three main macro categories.

The first two are about the monitoring of the design activity and of the development of the building sites. The latter (following the WBS system: Work Breakdown Structure e F.T.A: Fault tree analysis) have been developed with specific methodologies and software needed to control the process of analysis of critical factors.

The third one has focused on the creation of data about the environmental quality of the building heritage of Careggi. This has meant monitoring more than 18.000 spaces within 22 buildings. The on line system, called SACS, allows to catalogue the different spaces and to control the environmental quality related both to its dimension and function. In order to implement this system, researchers have used evidece-based methods to relate the functional side of the building with its users.

Keywords: monitoring, management, estate, tools, CAD, Hospital environment control.Francesca Reale and Luca Marzi Department of Technologies for Architecture and Design Universita` degli Studi di Firenze, Italia