Stan Chiu of HGA Architects & Engineers

Prefabricated and modular construction is rapidly rising in popularity for healthcare developers and providers. Modular construction is not only more cost effective and has a faster construction timeline—two benefits that have attracted multifamily and hotel developers—the standardized facilities that come with modular construction also create more efficient operations and provide a better patient experience.

“For integrated teams, there has been a surge in ground-up prefab as a more efficient way of delivering projects,” Stan Chiu of HGA Architects & Engineers, tells GlobeSt.com. “That is about saving time and money, and sometimes could be about increasing quality. You can generally hold that under creating more value. Parallel to that, there is a strategic angle as well. Organizations are looking at prefabrication as a way of returning better value and as a way of establishing standards that will live past the construction and onto the operation of the environment. It is a way of creating consistency from project to project.”

Design teams also see prefabrication as a streamlined approach to construction, particularly in healthcare, which can have a lot of moving parts. “There is a sub benefit of prefabrication, and that is shortening the amount of time that designers spend with users to determine what goes in what room,” says Chiu. “That is a good benefit of having standards. Instead of getting 100 designers to make 100 decisions, we are pulling everyone into a room to make one decisions.”