Ready for Handover

What We Do

Medelis offers equipment consultancy, planning and inspection services to architects, consulting engineers, construction companies, healthcare management and healthcare providers.

We are entirely independent and have no financial or commercial connection with any manufacturer or supplier. Neither do we supply equipment or act as an agent for any product.


The range of services offered new hospital projects would typically include:-

1) Feasibility studies, including consideration of viability, initial budgeting, staffing requirements etc.

2) Assisting architects with overall hospital and departmental fundamental designs.

3) Room-by-room consideration of equipment requirements, based on current practice and the specific needs of the client.

4) Detailed budgeting and the perceived effect of change on present and future requirements.

5) Development of bills of quantities and equipment specifications to achieve a "best buy" for the client.

6) Production of tender documents, room-by-room listings etc.

7) Production of layout drawings, typically at 1:50 scale, showing equipment positions.

8) Planning of equipment installation and utilities requirements.

9) Detailed review of contractors' proposals and submittals (for conformance with contractual requirements etc.).

10) Liaison with suppliers on detailed layout, services and installation requirements.

11) Inspection of equipment arriving at site. Checks for damage, completeness, functionality and conformance with approvals.

12) Supervision of placement, installation, commissioning and handover of equipment at site.

13) Final inspection of installed equipment and acceptance on behalf of the client.

14) Review and checking the compilation of equipment operating and maintenance documentation.


Services for existing facilities can include:-

1) Condition surveys and valuation of existing equipment.

2) Advising on equipment upgrading, refurbishment, maintenance etc.

3) Planning and implementation of maintenance schemes.

4) Spare parts planning ... etc.

Nearing Completion

The Art of Medical Equipment Consultancy

1) The challenge is to establish what the client really wants!

2) Four factors define a project:-

Scope
Budget
Time Schedule
Desired Quality

The consultant must retain influence over at least the last named of these to avoid an endless battle for control of the work.

3) A hospital is a building where the sick, victims of trauma, and the physically indisposed seek cure, repair, relief and comfort. It should not be just another "monument to engineers and architects"!

4) The whole point of the exercise is healthcare - meaning "positive patient outcomes". Continually ask the question "How will this benefit the patient"?

5) This is a business too serious to be left in the hands of "experts" such as architects or doctors!

6) The hospital should be regarded as a system for the delivery of services aimed at bringing patients to full health. Patients are cared for by nurses, not beds! We are dealing with:-

The delivery of health services
Health services are about people
Delivered to people by people

7) The role of the architect and engineer is to provide an environment in which people can deliver health services to people in need; that environment should be:-

Safe
Functional
Comfortable
Pleasant

... in that order

8) What seems clever now may not seem so in ten years time. We seek simplicity, utility and function. Remember (as Mies van de Rohe quite rightly said), often "less is more"!

9) Mechanical and electrical services are provided to bring required services to the places where they are needed to deliver healthcare.

10) The consultant should think like a consultant, not a technician. He should always consider added-value for the client.

11) Always bear in mind the three goals of medicine:-

To cure sometimes
To relieve often
To comfort always

12) Clinical conditions must prevail! But, "Primum non nocere" (first, do no harm!).

Managing and Problem Solving

"An Engineer is someone who can do for a dollar what any damn fool can do for ten!"

When facing a crisis

1) Identify the problem (really identify it; define it, write it down)
2) Focus all attention on it
3) Solve it
4) Then leave it alone (don't "tinker" with it)

Real objectives

1) What's the objective?
2) Is it profitable?
3) Is it clear?
4) Is the proposition attainable and practical?
5) Is the anticipated result measurable?
6) Do you have the facts - all the facts?
7) Are they reliable?
8) What are the options?
9) Have other options been thoroughly considered?
10) What would happen if you did nothing?

The Engineering Approach

1) Define the problem
2) Use fundamentals to analyze and understand it
3) Determine and evaluate possible solutions
4) Implement the best
5) Repeat steps if possible gain seems worth the cost in time and effort

Four Aspects of Project Management

1) The work to be done
2) The resources available to do it
3) Timescale in which to complete the work
4) Finance available to fund it

Cost Effectiveness

Doing the best you can with the money you have

Productivity

Doing the best you can with the time you have

Al-Ahmady

Hospital designed by Mohammad Wasim (with input from Geoff) for Mr. Al-Ahmady in Qatif (1996). As usual I had started with 1:100 plan-view sketches of the operating theatres and clean to dirty flow routes from CSD (adjacent to the theatres) out through to "dirty disposal". We also looked at dirty linen chutes down into the basement laundry but this was not taken up during construction.

Another view of the Al-Ahmady Hospital. With the pre-cast panels in place, it almost looks finished. But in actual fact it was little more than a shell at this stage (1996). The water table was only a metre or so below the ground at the site ... and yet the client insisted on underground parking! A hostage to fortune? A never-ending commitment to pump maintenance at the very least!