Collaboration is Both an Asset and a Need

Chris Kay is the president and chief operating officer of Hammes Company. Chris has over 30 years of project management, operations and business development experience in the building industry, spending the last 18 years of his career exclusively focused in the healthcare and life sciences markets. Chris is a graduate of University Of Houston - Gerald D. Hines College Of Architecture and also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Canterbury College in the United Kingdom. Chris is based in the firm's headquarters in Milwaukee, WI.

CK: Having been in the healthcare real estate industry for more than 25 years, we have witnessed many changes, and healthcare facility models have continued to evolve. We're currently seeing a steady increase in the demand for healthcare development and also growing demand for guidance in navigating the complexities of the healthcare real estate industry. In the past several years, there has been significantly rising demand for more collaborative and technically advanced ambulatory facilities and outpatient wellness and research centers that allow healthcare systems to be more flexible in how they deliver care. Because of the growing complexities associated with healthcare development, clients need everything from strategic planning, master facility planning and ambulatory network planning, to project management and real estate development for their major capital construction and asset optimization projects.
 

CK: Healthcare systems should focus on the below three strategies for optimizing their healthcare facilities for the future:

1. Modernizing existing facility assets is at the top of the list.
2. Effectively planning for collaborative and interdisciplinary healthcare and research facilities is crucial.
3. Implementing a system-wide access strategy that allows for a design-neutral approach.

CK: Interdisciplinary environments are collaborative spaces in which people work side by side in an intellectual manner to more efficiently achieve common objectives. Collaboration of healthcare and research, for example, enables information and innovative ideas to be shared and communicated faster. As a result, better outcomes are created along the way for both the delivery of healthcare and applied research in the life sciences field. Research has shown that flexible, interdisciplinary environments foster better collaboration and drive innovation and efficiencies.

CK: To save money, you must be efficient. And to be efficient, you must reduce both first dollar project development and life cycle operational costs. The ability to reduce operational costs through design flexibility and neutrality is phenomenal, and Hammes draws upon integrated multi-prime project delivery, or IMPD, strategies to create measurable economic benefits, including expediting time to market, on complex healthcare capital facilities projects. The essential difference with how Hammes develops healthcare facilities is that we don't take a traditional project management approach to developing healthcare facilities because it does not reach into production management, which is an essential part of the overall design and construction process.

Hammes has found that traditional capital infrastructure planning stays at the project leadership level and doesn't move down to the hands-on level of the people doing the work on the ground, which is precisely where we're best. We take a very lean approach in developing healthcare facilities that's more collaborative, more self-critical and strategically designed to yield higher measurable outcomes. Understanding the larger picture can be difficult, but it's highly meaningful to our clients. The bottom line is simple: A planning strategy must add measurable value and come from your market and your mission. Therein lies efficiency and innovation.

To learn more about Hammes Company, please visit www.hammesco.com.