By Daniel Casciato

Today, hospitals and other healthcare facilities in South Florida are being built to survive the strongest hurricanes.

With the threat of hurricanes, along with the accompanying winds, flooding, and systemic erosion, Charles Michelson, AIA ACHA LEED AP, President of Saltz Michelson Architects in Fort Lauderdale, FL, an architect of both new hospital projects and renovations, stresses that the design community is always prepared to design and engineer the proper solutions in the right locations.

“We are trained professionals prepared to respond to the need and protect the medical facilities within our communities,” he says. “There has been ongoing work for years hardening existing medical facilities to the essential service criteria outlined in the building code. Recent FEMA money availability has reinvigorated this effort to protect the buildings through impact windows and doors, structural grills and louvers and the protection of our infrastructure; generators; chiller plants and oxygen tank farms.”

Building according to Florida code will allow hospitals to withstand hurricane strength winds of 185 miles per hour. While hurricanes are a common occurrence in South Florida, Michelson notes that structural reinforcement is only one part of the protection formula for the protection of medical facilities.

“Protection includes the redundancy of all systems; alternate sources of power before the generators kick on, as well as multiple forms of communication,” he says. “For existing buildings that fall below new flood criteria, there are waterproofing and opening protections that can be added to a building and site to protect against flooding. Many new products are on the market over the past few years to respond to this need.”

One of the new design/building trends that is playing an important role in building hurricane-resistant buildings is that they are being constructed at a higher elevation to avoid any flooding issues.

“In addition, all infrastructure is constructed well above flood criteria, so that not only is the structure protected, all systems that run the building are elevated; making them safe and secure as well,” adds Michelson. “Part of the site considerations include the access to the hospital since a protected building that the public can’t get to in an emergency won’t provide the necessary services it was designed to provide the public.”

Following devastating hurricane damages, there’s always talk of improving the resiliency of facilities in an effort to protect them from increasingly damaging storms. In the wake of recent hurricanes, this is an issue on the minds of just about everybody who lives in a hurricane-prone area such as South Florida.

Michelson says that some of the lessons learned over time demonstrated the importance of protecting ancillary systems that allow the hospitals to function.

“When the power goes down, hospitals have generators, but when the city utilities go down, how do you run a chiller plant when the city is no longer providing water?” he says. “What’s the plan when the city sewer plant stops for two or three days?”

Since more companies now want to build with resilient design in mind, collaboration with subcontractors and other vendors, who may not have experience with resilient design, becomes even more important.

“Construction is a team activity,” says Michelson. “When new systems are being designed and constructed, designers, contractors, owners, vendors, and industry representatives work together to analyze and respond to each unique situation. No two medical facilities are alike and as such, there are no cookie cutter designs that take care of every unique condition. We remained informed and adaptable to create new and updated solutions to our environmental issues.”

For more information, visit www.saltzmichelson.com.