Press Releases 2022-05-16
May 16, 2022
Healthcare Facilities in the Face of the Energy and Digital Transition Challenge
As a basic human need, healthcare relies on a complex system that combines expertise, innovation, and knowledge transfer, with zero tolerance for unforeseen events and accidents. The COVID-19 pandemic underscores the importance of this issue, which requires the integration of people and technology. As the global leader in multi-technical services, Equans is the preferred partner of healthcare facilities, supporting them in improving their performance and the quality of care.
Insights from Alain Tenoux,
Director of Buildings and Complex Structures, Equans France.
What challenges must healthcare facilities overcome to successfully navigate their energy and digital transitions?
COVID-19 has been a real wake-up call for healthcare providers and the general public, who have rediscovered the importance of these facilities—which nothing can replace. They must be healthy, comfortable places to live and work, but also functional and adaptable. Adaptability and flexibility are therefore increasingly important issues. Securing the assets and data of both patients and healthcare staff is also a key factor.
The human dimension has also emerged as a pivotal element. Healthcare facilities have no choice but to enhance their appeal and operational performance. In addition to maintaining facilities to ensure equipment availability, simulations and modeling are now needed to optimize patient flow and care pathways. This involves working on collaborative spaces in close collaboration with healthcare staff.
As for CSR, it is reflected in particular by the need to reduce energy costs and the goal of carbon neutrality. Energy performance management solutions are thus being deployed. On-site renewable energy production is expanding. To accelerate this progress, facilities need support to comply with regulations, such as the Tertiary Eco-Energy Decree (DEET).
What makes this sector unique and distinct?
Supporting the healthcare sector as it faces the challenges of the triple transition—energy, industrial, and digital—requires leveraging expertise by drawing on the complementary nature of different professions. This is essential for designing, deploying, maintaining, and improving customized solutions tailored to healthcare requirements. More than any other sector, healthcare cannot tolerate even the slightest error or approximation. Human lives are at stake.
HVAC, heating-ventilation-air conditioning, operating rooms, clean air, electrical engineering, emergency power, video surveillance, access control, intrusion alarms, fire safety, building management systems, building automation, hypervision, data analytics, smart hospitals, BIM project management, BIM, digital twin, robotics, smart grids, IT infrastructure, audiovisual systems, mobile and Wi-Fi networks, servers, environmental performance, bio-based materials, and low-carbon real estate—all of these complementary areas of expertise are essential for addressing the sector’s challenges.
This is what made it possible to build an attractive, flexible, and scalable hospital in Pointe-à-Pitre and to open the intensive care unit at Henri Mondor Hospital in Créteil ahead of schedule—even in the midst of lockdown—to handle the influx of COVID-19 patients requiring critical care. Equans France teams are also leading the effort to build the future Nantes University Hospital, the medical center of excellence at the University Hospital Institute for Infectious and Tropical Diseases in Marseille, and to improve the operational performance of the Toulouse University Hospital.
What are the medium-term prospects?
New coronavirus variants, new pandemics, dependency, aging populations, climate shocks, migration, conflicts… the healthcare system must prepare to face multiple threats. It is therefore essential to take a holistic approach to healthcare facilities by addressing their entire lifecycle. Equans’ experts are involved in every stage—from co-design to maintenance, including financing, construction, and even reducing energy consumption and decarbonizing facilities.
New technologies are at the heart of this approach. The use of BIM—or Building Information Modeling—opens up new possibilities. This makes it possible to optimize the design and layout of departments; for example, determining where to locate the pharmacy in a hospital. The pharmacy must be both quickly accessible for obvious—and sometimes life-saving—medical reasons, and secure to prevent intrusions, theft, and malicious acts. It is therefore by combining innovations, technologies, observations, and discussions rooted in real-world experience that new solutions can continue to be implemented to benefit patients and healthcare providers.