What is future-ready health care design? Learn how to prepare resilient health care mechanical systems

Health care facilities are changing quickly and — with the recent experience with pandemics, natural disasters and the rapid technological advancements — there is dire need to ensure that building design meets future mechanical requirements. The next generation of health care buildings will be very different from the hospitals, medical office buildings and clinics that we are familiar with today.

This presentation will discuss the necessary steps needed to ensure that health care facilities are future-ready and what considerations are needed in mechanical design and smart infrastructure. The course will walk through the 10 steps that are necessary to design and build a health care facility to meet future requirements.

Learning objectives

At the end of the course, participants will be able to:

  • Understand what “future-ready” for health care means.
  • Learn how recent disasters and trends are driving the changes in health care design.
  • Know what mechanical provisions and smart infrastructure need to be considered for flexible health care design.
  • Look at the considerations that are necessary to design future-ready health care facilities.

 

About the instructor

April Woods, PE, LEED BD+C, a vice president and WSP’s Florida building systems director has played a key role in engineering mechanical solutions for major health care projects over the past decade. Her collaborative mindset has made her a valued team member on several integrated projects resulting in high-performing buildings. Woods’s passion since the beginning of her career at WSP has been on sustainable design, where she has played a critical role on numerous successful green building projects. Based on her expertise, Woods has had the opportunity to speak at several conferences and is published in numerous publications. She is a licensed mechanical engineer in the states of Texas and Florida and has an MS/BS degree in architectural engineering from Kansas State University. Woods is a Consulting-Specifying Engineer 40 Under 40 award winner and currently serves on the Editorial Advisory Board.