Healthcare Design - April 2016 - 50

ADVERTORIAL

Q&A

with Greg Quinn

PE, LEED AP, managing director,
Affiliated Engineers, Inc.
How has your company
evolved over the years?
Our firm came into existence
in 1978 to provide owners
with opportunities that
were being missed through
obsolete limitations of the
engineer's role. The gains
we see today in infection
control, energy efficiency,
flexibility, water efficiency,
operational and clinical
technology, and resilience
are all engineering-based
and -dependent. We've
realized the role that we
set out to fill, of technical
partner to the owner,
assistant to the staff, and
advocate for the patient.
And tomorrow's growing
need for intelligent building
systems that integrate with
enterprise management
systems only reinforces
these roles, not just during
the project but before,
during, and after.

How was your business
changed in the face of
healthcare reform?
During the brief pause in
the marketplace to gauge
Affordable Care Act impacts
and direction, our technical
planning assignments grew,
quickly followed by demand
for expertise focused on
ambulatory care and tertiary
care facilities. While our core
market of delivering highcapacity, high-acuity medical
centers hasn't gone away,
we've increasingly broadened
our support to advance a new
generation of facilities aligned
to specific levels of need.
What role does
collaboration play in your
process? How do you
ensure the right people
have a voice at the
design table?
Collaboration has always
been essential to project

success, but its evolution
from a sequential exercise
to a simultaneous one has
generated an incredibly
productive project team and
client culture. Practices
adopted essentially to
accelerate project delivery,
aided by leaps in design
technology, have also
improved thoroughness and
empowered the creativity
and resourcefulness of
every collaborating voice.
In a short time, commitment
to collaboration has brought
about a sea change
toward integrated delivery
and lean construction,
channeling what had been
capital project dollars into
outcomes focused on the
patient's behalf.
What is technology's
role in the design of
healthcare spaces?
The strongest and most
successful healthcare
project outcomes embrace

Northwestern Memorial Healthcare Lavin Family Pavilion. Photo: © Tom Rossiter Photography

technology in planning.
This is vital to effective
clinical and enterprise
communications
channels, positive
patient and staff
experiences, and better
patient care. Integrations
of technologies can
provide workflow
efficiencies, anticipate
future technologies while
supporting current ones,
eliminate redundant
networks and protocols,
assure understandable
interfaces for patients
and staff, and increase
staff mobility, in turn
increasing capacity
for patient interaction.
And today's healthcare
facilities generate vast
operational data, but
that can't be leveraged
sufficiently without
intelligent digital
systems.
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Healthcare Design - April 2016

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