Building Engineering Services

POLICY AND SERVICE CONTEXT

Overview

Many of the Building Engineering Services of a health facility have specialised needs within the context of healthcare provision and infection prevention and control. Specialist needs may include a combination of hygiene, redundancy and contamination-control requirements over and above the normal best engineering practice. The Building Engineering Services dealt with in this document include: ventilation systems, wet services, gas and vacuum services, electrical services and electronic services. The primary function of this document is to provide terms of reference to designers who are contacted to develop building engineering services systems. This document does not serve as a principal facility planning guide but as a best-practice guide within any planned level of healthcare service.

“This document describes engineering design, installation and commissioning principles in terms of current specialist clinical, contamination control and maintenance requirements“

Policy and Service Context

Context This document serves as guidance in the development of all levels of the healthcare facility. Certain sections may not be applicable to all considered levels of facility although, where a certain engineering service is supplied, that service shall be developed in accordance with the guiding principles contained herein. Design principles This document will detail design principles within the scope of services described in the Engineering Council of South Africa’s gazetted Guideline scope of services and tariff of fees in terms of the Engineering Professions Act (46 of 200). This document will also describe design, installation and commissioning principles in terms of current specialist clinical, contamination-control and maintenance requirements. While this document details design requirements and acceptance criteria which have an impact on clinical services, these requirements are prescribed within the framework of the entire IUSS set of guidance documents, and cannot be viewed in isolation. The following documents should be complied with, together with this document:

Within the South African healthcare context, many clinical and administrative zones may be subject to infection prevention and control measures with particular consideration for airborne contamination control.

Service Context

Levels of care

1. “Levels of Care” is discussed in detail in the Project Planning and Briefing document. The Building Engineering Services document does not prescribe levels of care within the healthcare system and does not delineate the application of technology within these levels. It intends only to describe the building engineering services and technical aspects that should be considered from the concept development to the closeout and handover stages of the project. It is not incumbent on the engineer to prescribe appropriate levels of care and this subject is therefore not addressed herein. The allocation of appropriate technologies and services within the prescribed levels of care is a function of the engineer during the facility-planning stage as described by this document.
2. In this document, where three distinct options are made describing system quantities or capacities, these are to be interpreted as the minimum acceptable standard, recommended best practice, and maximum practical limit respectively. Where only two options are given, these are to be interpreted as the minimum standard and best practice respectively. Where only one option is given, this is to be interpreted as the minimum acceptable standard. The reader is cautioned not to interpret these capacity standards as levels of care.