News & Insights

Building Services Engineering Guide for Healthcare Infrastructure

Draft Feedback & Consultation Process

Author

Mike Neill

Date

2024 December

Sector

Health

Purpose & Intention of the Guidelines

The Health NZ Design Guidance and Assurance Framework provides direction to designers to achieve consistent design solutions for New Zealand health infrastructure and facility design. Te Whatu Ora – Health NZ, supported by RCP, has been developing a ‘Building Services Engineering Guide’ (BSEG) to support this framework.

Nationally consistent design guidance and assurance processes will deliver quality infrastructure and facilities that support equity and sustainability objectives. Providing clear and consistent design expectations will also help to streamline development processes and reduce the risk of time and cost overruns.

The BSEG has been developed to support the building services engineers and the wider health construction industry to deliver quality health facilities that are:

Optimised for patient care – fundamentally used on the needs of the patient and the models of care being employed
Equitable in use – the design does not disadvantage or stigmatise any group of users and supports the principles of Te Tiriiti.
Safe – for all who enter and use the facilities
Flexible, adaptable and expandable – to allow for the changes in use and models of care into the future
Cost-effective - providing the best return on investment in a continually challenging need for infrastructure rebuild
Sustainable and efficient – not only to meet sustainability goals and mandates but to provide a long-life infrastructure capable of efficient and resilient operation and to support the needs of the community into the future
Practical and effective to operate – functionally straightforward and standardised where possible whilst embracing innovation and technology benefits in the delivery of care and safer environments.

The scope of these guidelines

The BSEG has been developed to address typical aspects of engineering applicable to health infrastructure and facility design (and build) and is based on the fundamental design knowledge of appropriately skilled designers. These guidelines are focused on designing new-build hospital facilities (secondary or tertiary), catering for the wide range of clinical services and support spaces needed to deliver the HNZ Hospital and Health Services (HHS) models of care for New Zealand.

The specific disciplines covered within the BSEG are:

Mechanical HVAC
Electrical Services
Communications, Security & Nurse Call
Fire Protection and Detection
Hydraulics
Medical Gases
Controls

The BSEG is split into three volumes, each having a unique application. These volumes are:

Volume 1: Fundamentals, Objectives and Principles - This volume provides background to using the guidelines, overarching principles, and project-wide initiatives that are discipline-agnostic and apply to multiple disciplines.
Volume 2: Disciplines - This volume is split into individual engineering disciplines with technical information relevant to each one, building on the information provided in Volume 1.
Volume 3: Specialist Spaces and Services -This volume defines the specialist areas within healthcare facilities and the specialised building services needed for each.

Guideline Development Process

The BSEG was developed by a team of industry peers tasked with delivering the BSEG within a tight timeframe. This team was led by RCP Project Director and Health Sector Lead Mike Neill and was made up of the following industry representatives:

Alan Lucic (Cosgroves)
Jeff Wilson (TechQ)
Karl Wilkinson (Beca)
Kevin Miller (Aurecon)
Kristian Jensen (WSP)
Stuart Smith (Beca)

Rather than reinvent the wheel, and given the time constraints imposed, the team opted to utilise the appropriate existing information available within Australian State Engineering guidelines as a basis for the BSEG, along with relevant aspects of other international guidance, including that from Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the USA.

This information was assessed and then adapted in a New Zealand context to reflect good engineering practices appropriate for the local construction industry.

Guideline Consultation Process

Te Whatu Ora - Health NZ, supported by RCP, is pleased to announce that a draft of the BSEG is now open for limited industry consultation.

To provide feedback, please complete the survey response form by clicking this link.
Links are also contained within the individual documents (see below).
Interested parties should download the relevant documents and then make any comments in the online survey form before COB 17^th January 2025.
Please note that only comments provided within the online survey form will be assessed.

For further information, please contact Mike Neill at mneill@rcp.co.nz.