“This is a totally radical way of building a health care environment,” said Kristin Moore, director of health care for DIRTT. “It’s been really exciting for us to see how quickly this has been embraced by the health care community.”

DIRTT began offering interior health care solutions after realizing the need for inherent flexibility in medical facilities. After surveying health care stakeholders, DIRTT found the need for flexibility was being expressed again and again. Technology, patient populations and health care models are constantly evolving and changing, Moore said, DIRTT wanted to create a solution that could change with health care easily and efficiently.

“[Health care] environments need to be flexible because facilities really don’t know what they’ll be delivering and who they’re going to be delivering it to,” Moore said.

The construction of the prefabricated modular walls also saves time and is cost efficient. While typical health care construction requires a linear process, DIRTT changes the process of conventional construction.

“Typically, when you look at a conventional construction project, we start with that shell. The very first thing we do is we start erecting steel studs for the drywall construction, and the challenge with that is now every trade has to work around those vertical impediments, so it’s not a very efficient process to say the least,” Moore said.

Linear construction is a long and drawn-out process that may run into several obstacles. The clean and unitized construction of DIRTT interiors is a major benefit to already occupied health care facilities that need construction to be unobtrusive and fast, Moore said.

“For health care facilities, they need to get their doors open to start generating revenue and start responding to their patient population,” she said. “If we can compress and compact that construction schedule that’s a big benefit for a health care facility.”

The horizontal detail of DIRTT solutions can also incorporate the specific needs of the health care setting. DIRTT walls can support anything from iPod docking stations to handrails to artwork. These details can be changed in or out depending on the needs of the facility and do not need to be screwed into the wall.

“We have a non-marring approach where that bracket detail supports it,” Moore said. “So over time, facilities do not have to come in and patch and repair where those elements used to be.”

DIRTT also concentrates on reducing material wastes. Using ICE software, DIRTT minimizes the amount of materials brought into construction and reuses materials in the interior to be as clean and sustainable as possible. The highly sustainable design technology also identifies which elements of DIRTT interiors can be reused in future renovations.

“Instead of creating waste and, at best, diverting waste, we just don’t create waste in the first place,” Moore said.

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