The health care environment plays a central role in infection control and prevention. So, how do architects influence construction activities through contract documents to ensure patient safety and interim life safety standards are met?
Patient Safety and Infection Control
Special considerations for interim life safety needs to be taken into consideration when doing construction within a hospital. When renovating part of the hospital, the adjacent critical areas need to remain operational with no effect on performance or patient care. Infection control measures should be evaluated during design to ensure that reasonable access to construction activity can occur without threat to the patients. However, prior to identifying construction activity boundaries, carefully planned routes for patient access, supply / instrumentation movement - soiled, clean and sterile, staff, and surgeon work flow are all key parameters to establish. To ensure these measures are incorporated fully into the construction implementation, document the expectations into your bidding documents. This provides a clear expectation up front for all trades on site.
During construction, dust control partitions are constructed in accordance with placement plans and details illustrating the wall construction and its attachment to floors, ceilings, and walls. It is imperative that a tight seal be maintained at all times around the entire perimeter of the partitions. Therefore, check the air flow log and walk the site perimeter to confirm that no visible issues occur during each one scheduled site observations throughout construction.
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