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Aged Care Design Guidelines
When Aged Care providers are re-evaluating their facilities portfolio and master planning for future development, including residential aged care facilities, retirement living and integrated community care services, it is the ideal time to establish an overarching corporate document that will effectively and efficiently direct them in this area.
Developing an Aged Care Design Guideline document is an effective mechanism for achieving a broadly accepted built environment consistency across any given care organisation. Design Guidelines set out core business aims, design criteria and operational requirements which will inform all key stakeholders involved in the delivery of future aged care facilities.
Merrin & Cranston’s experience in developing design guidelines has come out of their extensive experience in delivering aged care facilities for 40 years. This experience has seen earlier models of care re-defined, newer more up-to-date versions emerge, and the current models of care being provided in the marketplace by a number of the leading aged care providers.
Aged care facilities are complex buildings:
- viewed from the residents’ perspective it is their "home"
- viewed from the families perspective it is their “Mum’s” or “Dad’s” home, and also their place of care;
- viewed from a staff perspective it is a workplace in which a wide range of operational activities take place in order to provide care;
- viewed from a business perspective it is a facility which needs to be delivered cost effectively, functionally efficient and with low cost life-cycles.
These different perspectives bring with them competing objectives which must be delicately balanced, all within tight government regulation and budget constraints.
Merrin & Cranston has been involved with various clients, all with differing modes of operation, staffing and models of care. We also have undertaken strategic reviews of existing asset portfolios for a number of clients which provides us with good at-hand evidence of how a range of facilities have stood the test of time. This exposure gives Merrin & Cranston a unique advantage to speak into the process when developing Design Guidelines for an Aged Care provider.
Aged Care providers who are proposing to develop, expand or re-develop substantial asset portfolios need clarity when communicating their design requirements to architects and other design professionals. For some organisations, a clearly recognisable design distinctive is also required across all their facilities to reinforce their ‘brand’.
Establishing a set of Design Guidelines is an effective way to deliver future capital works projects with common principles for the built environment and consistent operational outcomes across all facilities. They bring together an organisation’s future direction, values & distinctives, model of care, operational structures and integrated care solutions through a benchmarking and fact finding workshop type process, that aims to engage key stakeholders and encourage ownership of continual aged care improvement. Investment in developing Aged Care Design Guidelines can expect to produce the following benefits:
- Facilitates the consultation with, and considered input of key stakeholders, and provides a single document for collection of those key inputs;
- Promotes a streamlined delivery method by providing a preliminary Design Brief to be easily prepared for specific projects;
- Creates an opportunity to process, formalise and articulate what is corporately important for aged care built environments before dealing with site specific issues and agendas.
- Succinctly communicates a preferred corporate knowledge that greatly assists with establishing site specific planning and design solutions.
- Sets a clear benchmark for assessing the amenity and layout of existing RACF buildings in order to guide the need and extent of future refurbishment works.
- Directs the delivery of property solutions to meet business targets;
- Sets a framework to achieve consistency in facility design;
- Provides a mechanism to create spaces and facilities that are functionally efficient;
- Creates a point of reference for comparison and refinement of the delivery of care, building designs, operations, etc;
- Provides a “yard stick” for comparison of existing buildings when considering potential acquisitions;
- Once established, reduces the amount of key stakeholder consultation required for each new project;
- The process provides the opportunity to benchmark against other projects/facilities;
- Provides a data base that assists with the production of a preliminary construction budget at the early phase of new projects; and
- Assists with identifying potential areas for construction cost reductions and other efficiencies to be made if required.
Design Guidelines primarily serve the purpose of a concise but comprehensive set of statements that communicate the desired outcome for a purpose-designed built environment for residents, clients, staff and visitor functional requirements. They form the principal source of information for design consultants from a project’s inception through to construction and occupation, and thereby facilitate specific project briefing, design reviews and post occupancy evaluation.
Merrin & Cranston have a broad experience with a number of major charitable aged care providers, across numerous aged care facilities. We can attest to the fact that there is no single model of care being provided, nor a single design solution that stands taller than the rest. While there are several core principles that drive quality care delivery and design of facilities, how these are worked out in practice has produced varied models of care across the aged care industry.
This brief overview provides something of a picture demonstrating the need and value gained in establishing Aged Care Design Guidelines.
The purpose is to have a design tool that is relevant, resourceful and ready to go when an Aged Care provider is facing the need for future development whether it’s a new build or refurbishment.
The Design Guidelines process naturally brings together vision for the future, current needs, and learnings from the past, that combine to produce a succinct corporate communication articulating a desirable built environment that reinforces and facilitates a preferred way that an Aged Care provider cares for elderly people living in community.
It makes logical sense when you think about it.