PHILADELPHIA – Schneider Electric has announced their involvement with the PennFIRST team to design and build a new state-of-the-art pavilion featuring smart building technology for the University of Pennsylvania Health System (Penn Medicine).

Penn Medicine’s new Pavilion aims to serve the evolving needs of patient comfort and satisfaction, and ensure clinicians can deliver the latest treatments and patient care techniques, while Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure for Healthcare will help Penn Medicine to reduce costs, optimize energy use, increase staff efficiency and much more for new levels of hospital efficiency.

The Pavilion will offer 500 private patient rooms and 47 operating rooms in a 1.5-million-square-foot, 17-story facility across from the Hospital of University of Pennsylvania and adjacent to the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine.

The key features of the Pavilion include an adaptable room concept through which patient rooms are equipped to maintain flexibility between an intensive care unit set-up and a standard room as patients recover, or as the patient population and caregiving needs change in the coming years.

Each spacious room will include a private bath and a comfortable area for family members and caregivers to stay nearby.

The new design also boasts a seamless flow of operations – from the emergency department through hybrid operating rooms used for both surgeries and high-tech interventional procedures through recovery and discharge – enhanced by technology and the latest research on how to facilitate and improve care team collaboration.

Telemedicine functionality will allow remote monitoring and consultations, as well as technology to link patients to their friends and families at all times.

The eco-friendly construction, design and operations plan works to strengthen Penn’s commitment to the environment, through pursuit of LEED certification, and innovations like the re-use of water, 100 percent outside air, and park-like, outdoor green space for patients, families and staff.

Warren Rosebraugh, Schneider Electric healthcare solution architect, stated that EcoStruxure for Healthcare will include multiple aspects enabling improvements to patient care.

For instance, Schneider Electric’s Clinical Environment Optimization solution helps save energy by automatically adjusting room conditions based on occupancy information and allows patients to ensure that they are comfortable by setting their room temperature through the patient room control mobile app, as well as adjusting the light, ventilation and blinds in their room.

This level of comfort can impact the patients’ state of mind and ability to sleep comfortably, therefore supporting their recovery.

Another example is when an operating room is to be used for an operation, the room settings will automatically go into occupied mode and the electrical and medical gas systems are checked, ventilations are checked, and environmental conditions are verified to make sure the room is safe.

Rosebraugh also highlighted the Lean IPD approach used to deliver the new Pavilion.

“The biggest challenge, as well as the most rewarding aspect of the project, was working with a large number of stakeholders to construct the pavilion using a Lean Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) approach,” said Rosebraugh. “This is one of the largest projects on the East Coast to design and build through this approach. In a traditional design and construction approach, each firm works on their respective project role and scope separately and linearly. In contrast, in IPD, the team works side by side from the beginning of the design process. With incentive through a shared profit model, the resulting collaboration saves time and money through innovation and solves challenges in real time.”

Construction of the Pavilion began in September 2016 and will advance through early 2021, with occupancy projected later in 2021.

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PHILADELPHIA — The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new hospital on May 3. The new “Pavilion” will be located on Penn Medicine’s West Philadelphia campus — located at the former site of Penn Tower — where it will house inpatient care for the Abramson Cancer Center, heart and vascular medicine and surgery, neurology and neurosurgery and a new emergency department. Completion of the new pavilion is expected in 2021.

The new, 16-story, 1.5 million-square foot facility has a budget of $1.5 billion. The design and construction of the project is a collaborative effort between multiple firms. PennFIRST, an integrated project delivery team in Philadelphia is completing the planning and design process for the new hospital with global health care design firm HDR, as well as the international architectural firm Foster + Partners. BR+A is the engineering designer, with construction management experts L.F. Driscoll in Bala Cynwyd and Balfour Beatty Construction in Dallas, also on the project. Additionally, Penn Medicine’s clinical and facilities experts are part of this collaborative team, as well as the input of patients and related family advocates.

The design team had the minimization of patient stress on the forefront of building design for the new facility, with a goal of maximizing patient care and treatment, according to Troy Parks, senior communications specialist at HDR. As such, the hospital is designed to divide into smaller “neighborhoods” to provide a greater sense of community, and create a warmer feeling overall for the hospital. Plentiful daylight and landscape views will be present at this new facility, with the intention of optimizing the health and wellbeing of its occupants, according to Parks.

The new Pavilion will have 500 new private patient rooms and 47 operating and interventional rooms. These patient rooms were designed with “long-term flexibility” so that they can adapt and change over time with “minimal impact to the building fabric,” according to Parks. The rooms are designed in such a way that they can transform from intensive care related needs to a standard room as patients recover over time. Additionally, all private patient rooms have a uniform design to maximize patient care, and include a private bath and a comfortable area for family members and visitors. Telemedicine technologies will be installed into each of the rooms to maximize patient and staff communication, as well as to make “multi-nodal” physician consultations possible.

The new hospital design includes a number of environmentally sustainable features, with LEED certification being pursued for construction of the new facility. Some of these sustainable features include the reuse of water, optimized access to daylight, 100 percent outside air, outdoor green space available building occupants and visitors, and overall high performance building envelope and mechanical systems. Additionally, the surrounding landscape was designed to create pedestrianized routes and landscaped gardens and plazas to enhance not only the patient experience, but also to enhance that of the surrounding community.

The new Pavilion is being designed with a network of public bridges and walkways that will not only make movement around the campus pleasant and easy, but will link the new facility to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and the adjacent Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine. This network of walkways also easily leads building occupants to the local train station.

“As the nation’s oldest teaching hospital, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania is rooted in a history of firsts going back nearly 150 years,” said Ralph W. Muller, chief executive officer of the University of Pennsylvania Health System in a recent statement. “Now, with the Pavilion, we’re poised for the next 100 years of advances in patient care,” said Muller.

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