A Licensed Facility Is a Different Project

Owners plan surgery center projects around construction duration and are then surprised by plan review, inspections and commissioning. Building it is frequently the shorter half. A program that does not have realistic review and approval durations written into it is not a program, it is a hope.

Review duration is also outside anybody's control, which is what makes it different from construction risk. A contractor can add crews to recover a construction delay. Nobody can accelerate a review, which is why it belongs in the program as a real activity with realistic float rather than as an optimistic placeholder.

A surgical suite has to demonstrate that its air changes, pressure relationships, temperature and humidity control, medical gas and emergency power all perform as designed. That is testing and documentation, and it happens after construction is finished.

Compressing it is not an option on a licensed facility, and it is the phase most often left out of a program drawn around construction duration. Allow for it explicitly or the opening date moves.

1. 01Build the program around review durations, honestly stated.
2. 02Coordinate with your design team through the review process.
3. 03Install to the reviewed and approved documents, not to a variation.
4. 04Sequence medical gas and its certification properly.
5. 05Support commissioning and the licensure inspection.

Put the review duration in the program as a real activity with a real duration. Every surgery center that opened late had a program where review appeared as a two-week placeholder somebody hoped would be generous.

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