The Clinic Does Not Close

A clinic that has to cancel a session loses the revenue and still pays the staff and the rent. The construction saving that caused it is almost always smaller. Which means the schedule should be built around the clinical schedule, not the other way round, even when that is less efficient for us.

Utility interruptions are the ones with the most consequence. A clinic can absorb noise; it cannot absorb losing power to a treatment area or medical gas to a procedure room without warning. Those shutdowns have to be planned with clinical staff weeks ahead, not agreed the previous afternoon.

A canceled clinical session loses the revenue, keeps the staff cost and keeps the rent. That number is almost always larger than whatever construction efficiency prompted the disruption, and the clinic can usually tell you what it is.

Getting that figure and building the program around it is not a courtesy to the client. It is how the project ends up costing less overall, which is a different argument from being considerate and a more persuasive one.

1. 01Build the program around the clinical schedule.
2. 02Do the loud work when the clinic is not seeing patients.
3. 03Keep construction traffic out of patient circulation entirely.
4. 04Plan shutdowns with the facility, never unilaterally.
5. 05Walk the site with the facility weekly.

Get the actual clinic schedule, by room and by day, before writing the program. Every facility has sessions that cannot be moved and days that are quieter than others, and building around them costs us efficiency and saves the client far more than it costs.

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