Analysis of the Design Process of Green Children's Hospitals: Focus on Process Modeling and Lessons Learned

Healthcare facilities are among the most complicated facilities to plan, design, construct and operate. A new breed of hospitals is considering the impact of the built environment on healthcare worker productivity and patient recovery in their design, construction, and operation. A crucial subset of healthcare facilities are children's hospitals where the consequences of poor building system design and performance have the potential to seriously impact young lives with compromised health. Green facilities are not always pursued: they are perceived as difficult to build and costing more than equivalent conventional hospitals. This study explored the design process of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and Penn State's Hershey Medical Center Children's Hospital to understand the critical steps and processes for green children's hospital design. Producing a series of process maps that identify the key characteristics in the complex design requirements of a green children's hospital, this paper reveals the importance of design process to design quality. More broadly, this research will help future project teams meet the complex design requirements of green children's hospitals.