Together, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Military Health System, Kaiser Permanente, and Sutter Health have formed the Healthcare BIM Consortium (HBC), an effort by owners in collaboration with vendors, designers, and builders to form solutions to support facility lifecycle management.

Russ Manning, LEED AP, senior health system planner, capital planning branch, Portfolio & Management Division, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs; and Willy Paul, executive director, NW region, Kaiser Permanente, explained the mission of the organization and its goals for how to better use BIM in the design of healthcare facilities, but most importantly in their lifecycle management, during the session “Contributing to Life Cycle Management Through the Healthcare BIM Consortium—What this Means to the Building, Design, and Construction Industry” at the HEALTHCARE DESIGN.11 conference in Nashville.

While healthcare is similar to other building sectors, such as education, retail, or chemical facilities, its scale, complexity, and criticality make it a whole other animal. That’s why the HBC is focused on BIM to input information about a facility, use that data during design and construction, to be able to have successful data output.

As for the goals of the group, Manning and Paul laid it out like this:

1. Automate space PFD (program for design) validation in the design submittal process;
2. Automate room equipment (project room contents) validation;
3. Automate data population of computerized maintenance management software;
4. Apply the same concept as #4, but with FFE; and
5. Optimize the benefits of BIM during execution of design to ensure successful project construction.

For more information on HBC, please go here.