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A primer on construction readiness and compliance in your facility

Healthcare Life Safety Compliance, February 1, 2019

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Healthcare Life Safety Compliance.

  A new year brings new beginnings, and many hospitals will enter 2019 either with new construction projects on the horizon or with projects already in progress. Lest you forget the power of the accreditation agencies that will be monitoring your efforts, though, you should be aware of many things that could affect those projects from a life safety perspective.

You might think you have the most well put-together life safety compliance program, but the minute your facility decides to make changes to the physical environment of the building, that can change. A construction project disrupts the day-to-day life in a hospital and can present many security breaches, as well as fire and life safety dangers that pop up unexpectedly every day—even if you thought you had everything covered.

“To my mind, there is no more risky business in the physical environment (the management of ligature risks notwithstanding) than undertaking construction or renovation projects, particularly when those projects are in spaces adjacent to occupied patient care (or indeed, any occupied) areas,” writes Steven MacArthur, senior consultant and safety expert for The Greeley Company in Danvers, Massachusetts, in his blog, Mac’s Safety Space. “With the adoption of the 2012 Life Safety Code® (LSC) and the growing invocation of Chapter 43 Building Rehabilitation, it would seem that the tip of the regulatory spear is getting sharper by the moment.”

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Healthcare Life Safety Compliance.

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