Schneider Assesses Health-Care Facilities

Schneider Electric introduced its new HealthBuildings Risk Assessment program to help hospital stakeholders understand and prioritize the risks associated with the facility, allowing them to increase efficiency.

In the HealthBuildings assessment, a team of engineers and experts look at a facility’s complete infrastructure including mechanical, building management system, electrical, data center power and cooling systems, and security technology. The assessment provides a roadmap of the risks based on multiple impact levels, such as the effect on patients and the probability of occurrence. It then provides suggestions on the best ways to mitigate these issues and the associated costs, allowing hospital leadership to prioritize and create a performance improvement plan that will result in a safer hospital.

The company offers several other programs that leverage the assessment findings including:

• HealthPower Infrastructure Program, which includes an assessment of the electrical system.
• HealthIT Infrastructure Program, which analyzes the hospital’s data center, including current and future capacity requirements for data in terms of power and cooling infrastructure, capacity needs and operations.
• HealthMechanical Infrastructure Program, which includes a tour of the facility, inspection of mechanical system drawings and documentation, physical inspection of HVAC mechanical equipment, inspection of maintenance records, review of alarm logs, and an inspection of the building management system and its current condition.
• HealthSecurity Infrastructure Program, which establishes a baseline on how the security department utilizes its existing technology and operations to support the service levels required by the hospital, to determine functional and performance requirements and the best possible utilization of existing technology and systems.

As part of these programs, once an assessment is complete a plan is put into action to address and prioritize deficiencies and to comply with codes and standards. Finally, a system engineer reviews the maintenance results and findings, analyzes operational issues, reviews the programs implemented and develops recommendations for improvement.