This month’s column is a continuation of July’s, with a focus on the building program’s initiative to create and benchmark highperformance patient rooms to the more traditional patient room operation and maintenance. For a building program to be successful and sustainable, it is imperative that the program include an operating budget as well as a construction budget. Fifteen to 20% of the cost of a building is first cost, and that remaining 80% or more of the cost to own a building is in the operation of the building over its life. The following is a sample of what the HVAC annual operating budget add-on to the current hospital operating budget along the infection control beta-test site data collection reporting could look like at the conceptual phase of four new hybrid patient rooms on a high-performance patient floor infection control (IC) corridor.
When designing a renovated patient care space within a hospital facility the design engineer should refresh her memory relative to this Basis of Design by first going to ASHRAE Handbook 2015 Applications and read chapters 8 (health care facilities), chapters 36 through 43 relative to building operation and management, chapter 59 (HVAC security), and chapter 61 (codes and standards). In addition, the design engineer should take into account ASHRAE Standard 170-2013, Ventilation of Health Care Facilities. For this project, the design team is also planning to follow the pharmaceutical industry’s design guidelines for clean room design.