Multicriteria Assessment and Prioritization of Hospital Renewal Needs

Accurate performance assessment of building systems and subsystems (e.g., roof, boiler, windows, etc.) is essential to properly prioritize the subsystems that compete for capital renewal funding. Typically, the performance assessment of buildings has been based on physical condition alone, which is not sufficient for specialized facilities such as hospitals. This paper introduces a practical multicriteria performance assessment framework for hospitals with four unique features: (1) it divides the hospital into three zones with different characteristics and importance: clinical, nursing, and support; (2) it assesses the performance of hospital subsystems, considering four key performance indicators: condition, level of service, sustainability, and risk; (3) it assesses the service quality (temperature, lighting, noise, etc.) within various indoor spaces and accordingly determines the level of service of related subsystems; and (4) it incorporates a simple all-on-site visual inspection application that automatically computes the subsystems' overall priority indexes. A survey among hospital maintenance experts was used to collect data for the design and verification of the proposed framework. This paper discusses the framework design and its benefits in improving the performance assessments of hospitals.