Any chain is only as strong as the weakest link. Whether you are building a new care home or refurbishing your existing care home, the entire chain of delivery needs to connect and maintain its strength to achieve a successful conclusion. The first (and last) link in the chain is understanding and anticipating CQC certification.
Three of the key principles implemented by CQC are making sure that residents are safe, treated with dignity and respect and live in a person- centric environment. That applies to all aspects of a care home, but in this case, we are applying it to the design and construction process. Achieving new certification or recertification is not a straightforward process but can be simplified to an extent if the care home is redeveloped in a way which is sympathetic to those requirements but also takes the opportunity to differentiate itself from the market and future proof itself for the next generation of residents and their families.
Engaging the stakeholders
The second link in the chain is thinking like a resident. Some care home operators employ estates managers. One of my clients has a Director of Innovation and Delivery. That person not only manages the building's day-to-day but also engages with all the stakeholders to bring on board everyone with an interest in successfully completing the project. With schools going back, I will use a triangle analogy. Some building contractors will try to balance time, cost and quality, with one of those factors missing out, creating an isosceles triangle, but ideally what you want is an equilateral triangle, with innovative care home operators looking at it from the perspective of equal strength of the design team, the delivery team and the operational team, or alternatively the equal needs of estate management, clinical management and operational commercial management. However you choose to describe it, supporting and promoting the residents' experience leads to greater staff retention, greater commercial return and a successful business model.
Preparation
The third link in the chain is project preparation. When the stakeholders have engaged with the process, expressed their views and highlighted various important factors, what is the overall design brief issued to the architect? Has risk been stripped out of the building to such an extent that it looks like an institution? The care home should be a living community with IT hubs, cinema, shops, cafes and restaurants, hairdressers, all bringing the outside in to create active lives for residents. The stakeholders should be creative at the beginning to avoid expensive changes later. Change management systems are not supposed to be a safety net to catch all the things that were forgotten in their preparatory stage. AGP once asked a builder and architect to increase the bed spacing by 30 cm to accommodate clinical equipment. The problem was that the power, medical gases, lighting and fire systems had all been installed, plasters and in some cases commissioned. A small change meant a large cost.
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