Prefabricated Solutions for Healthcare & Hospitals
When creating interiors for healthcare facilities and hospitals, it’s important to choose the right architectural company and processes. Prefabricated solutions have become very popular among these types of facilities – these are interiors that are built off-site, enabling clean construction and minimal disruption.
This article delves more into the key features of healthcare facility design and the benefits of prefabricated solutions.
Key features of healthcare design
Hospitals and healthcare premises require a very unique style of interior. It is a style that has evolved over the years to match the changing attitudes and methods used in healthcare. A few of the key factors include:
- Practicality: Such spaces need to first and foremost be practical – patients and equipment need to be easily moved around and sockets and lighting need to be located in the right places. Ideally, each room has to be designed around its purpose.
- Cleanliness: This is very important in a healthcare setting. Surfaces need to be easy to sanitise and air quality needs to be filtered to prevent the spread of infection.
- Aesthetics: While practicality and cleanliness may take priority, the visual appearance of these buildings is still important for creating the right atmosphere. More hospitals are experimenting with art, natural light, natural materials and plants to create a more calming and welcoming ambience.
- Adaptability: This is perhaps the most challenging aspect of healthcare interior design. Spaces need to be suited to a specific purpose, but there also needs to be the ability to adapt and evolve if new technologies or practices are introduced.
Interior designers for healthcare facilities must meet all of these specs. By choosing the right interior design company, you can be certain that all these specs will be met.
Why fabricate interior off-site?
Another big challenge that healthcare facilities often have is time and money.
Either when trying to meet a programme for the construction of a new-build Hospital or renovating an existing healthcare facility, time is of the essence. Most healthcare clinics cannot just temporarily close for remodelling – patients need to be constantly taken care of and so any renovation work has to be done around them. This typically involves closing off sections temporarily and moving patients and treatments to other parts of the building. These disruptions can greatly affect the quality of healthcare given.
Carrying out production and M&E fitting off-site reduces the amount of on-site construction work needed. A healthcare interior fit-out can be transported in modules with all the electrics, plumbing and med gases already in place, meaning it is assembled much faster. This allows facilities to keep operating with minimal disturbances.
Off-site fabrication is also favoured by many healthcare facilities because of the cost. Unlike conventional building methods, this modern method of construction not only reduces the time spent on site, but the quantity of tradesmen required. Where programmes used to depict multiple, consecutive slots of time for individual trades, this plug and play solution is installed in one. Manufacturing a healthcare interior fit-out off-site also allows different designs to be tested and agreed-upon before they are produced and installed.
Relating back to the key features of healthcare design, modular construction also allows for adaptability – interiors can be easily and cost-effectively reconfigured if new practices or technologies come in.
The future of healthcare architectural design?
The NHS has discussed plans to increase the number of single-occupancy rooms for patients. Prefabrication is likely to make such spaces much easier to build. A benefit of a healthcare interior fit-out is that large open spaces can be easily converted into multiple small rooms.
Because this practice is cost-effective and future-proof, it makes sense for healthcare facilities to switch to this modern method of construction, now, to secure low-cost, quick and easy reconfiguration in the future. By reducing reliance on plasterboard, which gets thrown into landfill whenever a change is made, prefabricated wall solutions can be re-used and redesigned easily to fit a change in floorplan as and when it is required.
To conclude, if you run a hospital or healthcare facility and are planning to remodel, consider prefabricated solutions over the traditional plasterboard approach. It is a fast, cost-effective and adaptable way of fitting out a healthcare building. At Architectural Wallsz, we can help to carry out your healthcare interior fit-out using these methods. Get in touch today to discuss your plans.