Critical Environment Solutions Are an Integral Part of Facility Design and Construction
When developing a new facility, the three teams that bear the weight of the project are the architects and designers, engineers, and construction experts. These teams are largely responsible for bringing a business’s vision for their facility to life.
Yet additional expertise is required. Every architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) team is stacked with the support of consultants and subcontractors that provide significant value on these projects. Acousticians, environmental impact specialists, lighting consultants, IT and security experts, and many more all play critical roles.
In the case of facilities in which cleanrooms are required, specialists, such as compliance experts, infection or contamination prevention consultants, cleanroom monitoring system manufacturers, and mechanical engineers ensure that a critical environment solution performs as expected. However, much of the work that specialists perform to complete a critical environment project can be accomplished with one key support: a critical environment manufacturer.
Critical environment and custom HVAC manufacturers design and build the cleanroom products required for industries that need to meet indoor air quality (IAQ) standards. They also have vast experience working with AEC teams and relevant specialists to ensure that mission-critical environments are set up for success. Any AEC team tasked with designing and building for spaces like these should bring a critical environment manufacturing facility to the table as soon as possible to benefit from all they have to offer.
3 Key Benefits Your Critical Environment Manufacturer Brings To the Table
Tech Clarity, an independent research firm, stresses the importance of a collaborative environment among AEC teams. Citing poor communication as a major problem among AEC teams, Tech Clarity’s analysis argues for collaboration and a multidisciplinary approach to improve outcomes.
For cleanrooms and other environments with stringent IAQ requirements, AEC teams will experience these benefits by collaborating with a critical environment manufacturer:
Prioritizing health in the design process: It goes without saying that healthcare facilities that require infection prevention measures must bring critical environment teams into the fold to shape designs around healthcare measures. After all, a healthcare facility is only as strong as the care it provides. Therefore, infection prevention is a primary design consideration, not an additional characteristic in the building’s overall scope. Failure to design for patient safety only creates undesirable redundancies and additional commissioning work after the fact.
Yet prioritizing health is not solely limited to medical facilities. What AEC teams consider good design has broadened to include IAQ considerations, based on research that shows the detrimental effects of unfiltered air. In certain regions of the U.S., air filtration has become a primary design issue due to pollution and climate change. Engineering and manufacturing teams with a depth of experience designing cleanrooms and critical environments provide a wealth of information and experience on how to foreground IAQ for any commercial building, not just healthcare.
- Aligning with the facility’s bottom line: When designing for facilities with critical environments in them, including pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical facilities, industrial manufacturing, and more, business success depends upon infection and contamination prevention. For instance, the economic toll from healthcare-acquired infections is estimated at $28 to $45 billion per year. From a facility perspective, design teams must recognize the business case for infection or contamination control. Partnering with experts from a critical environment manufacturing facility can support a stronger plan for limiting costs that are controllable to a significant degree with the right custom HVAC systems and products. AEC teams can also benefit from selecting a critical environment HVAC team that not only understands IAQ, but that also builds modular, prefabricated solutions, which are known for their reduced cost.
- Key support for MEP teams: Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineers are responsible for a significant portion of a facility’s infrastructure. An MEP team may be well-versed in installing commercial heating and cooling systems. However, building systems for specialized rooms may require experts to determine an effective plan to integrate critical environment solutions into the general air distribution and ventilation system. This will require the work of several teams, including a custom HVAC team, cleanroom monitoring system specialist, and other consultants, specifically dedicated to these environments. Inviting these teams to participate in the HVAC engineering process will lessen the burden on MEP teams and provide meaningful solutions during the initial engineering phases.
Partnering With a Critical Environment Expert Is a Big Step Toward Value Engineering
Value engineering is a relatively simple concept to understand, but a difficult one to achieve in practice. Essentially, value engineering asks core engineering teams to adopt strategies that have been proven to reduce costs, such as efficient project management and energy efficiency considerations.
Proponents of value engineering suggest that teams should consider creative and non-traditional methods to streamline expenses throughout a project’s many phases. For AEC teams designing facilities that demand critical environment solutions, bringing in a critical environment manufacturing facility can help meet a business’s key priorities, prevent avoidable expenditures, and reassign the monumental responsibilities that AEC teams face.
A critical environment HVAC team is not only valuable for the high-performing systems and products they design and build. The expertise that comes with decades of experience in a variety of critical environments is indispensable knowledge that is worth tapping as soon as possible.