To stay compliant, hospitals must submit their Seismic Compliance Plans by January 1, 2026, and construction documents by March 1, 2026, if they plan to operate acute care services beyond 2030. The Seismic Compliance Plan outlines how the hospital will achieve substantial compliance with seismic safety regulations by the established deadlines. The plan also includes milestones to track progress and a financial plan to demonstrate how the hospital will fund the necessary seismic upgrades or retrofits.
HCAi, the Department of Healthcare Access and Information, offers financial assistance and a 0 % interest loan program to help some hospitals, particularly those facing financial hardships, meet seismic requirements. The state is helping rural hospitals that don’ t have the money for retrofits with interest-free loans and financial assistance, and we’ re currently working with some of these hospitals.
It’ s a complicated undertaking, but also an important mission because when the next earthquake hits, these upgrades will determine whether the hospital can keep its doors open and save lives. We’ re not just designing buildings, we’ re designing resilience
We often provide phased construction design to isolate work areas with infection control barriers and schedule shutdowns during off-hours on the weekends. For example, when replacing a generator, we might coordinate a temporary power transfer overnight, ensuring minimal interruption to the hospital’ s operations.
Or let’ s say we’ re replacing an air handling unit and we’ re allowed to shut down the air to sections of the hospital for four hours. That means when we replace an air handler, first we provide a temporary air handler to tie into the existing duct system, but we can only shut down the unit for four hours max. It’ s very delicate because we are writing a method of procedure documentation where everything is timed per minute. We have to ensure that we do the cut-over within four hours because that’ s the limit we have. We usually do many of these jobs overnight to minimize interruption to the hospital’ s operations. Often, we’ re standing there with the contractors because we want to make sure that they do it right. By the morning, everything is back online and running like before.
What are some of the biggest challenges healthcare facility designers face during a project?
One of the biggest challenges is not just what we build, but how we build it without shutting down critical systems in the hospital. Hospitals operate 24 / 7 and everything has to be on. You can’ t just disconnect things. That means when we’ re replacing something major, like an air handling unit, a generator or an automatic transfer switch, we can’ t just flip a switch and shut things down because lives depend on that equipment. That’ s where creative phasing and precision planning come in. We work closely with the hospital leadership, the facilities staff and infection control to double up construction strategies to keep departments fully operational during major infrastructure upgrades.
6 P2S MAGAZINE SUMMER 2025