Jason Lucas

Virtual reality simulation for construction safety promotion

Safety is a critical issue for the construction industry. Literature argues that human error contributes to more than half of occupational incidents and could be directly impacted by effective training programs. This paper reviews the current safety training status in the US construction industry. Results from the review evidence the gap between the status and industry expectation on safety. To narrow this gap, this paper demonstrates the development and utilisation of a training program that is based on virtual reality (VR) simulation. The VR-based safety training program can offer a safe working environment where users can effectively rehearse tasks with electrical hazards and ultimately promote their abilities for electrical hazard cognition and intervention. Its visualisation and simulation can also remove the training barriers caused by electricitys features of invisibility and dangerousness.

Case Analysis to Identify Information Links between Facility Management and Healthcare Delivery Information in a Hospital Setting

AbstractEffective facility management is a critical aspect of ensuring an adequate physical environment to administer care. Maintaining the environment is complicated with numerous critical systems because of occupants with compromised immune systems, and the need to maintain the systems with minimal effect on clinical operations. The complexity and importance of tasks that facility managers deal with require them to have adequate, up-to-date, and easily accessible information. This paper presents a case study that analyzes the impact of facility management on healthcare delivery. The work was completed in the preliminary stages of a research initiative for developing a lifecycle information management system to support facility management within healthcare. A case concerning mechanical systems and critical failures in a healthcare setting is analyzed to identify the types of information needed to adequately perform maintenance tasks. The information is then analyzed for origin along the lifecycle of the ...

Gap Analysis on the Ability of Guidelines and Standards to Support the Performance of Healthcare Facilities

AbstractThe condition of the physical environment within healthcare facilities has a large impact on the quality of care, recovery time, and patient satisfaction. To maintain and ensure adequate operation of the physical environment, facility management must maintain a state of continuous compliance and constant readiness. This requires the facility management personnel to have a full understanding of the regulatory standards and guidelines that address the performance of a healthcare facility. This paper discusses an analysis of the major healthcare standards and guidelines that the American Society of Healthcare Engineers suggests facility management groups need to be familiar with. A gap analysis is performed to identify gaps between the design and construction guidelines and their ability to support healthcare facility operation and performance standards. Finally, a case example is used to discuss how the standards and regulations can be incorporated into a healthcare facility information framework to...

Evaluating the Role of Healthcare Facility Information on Health Information Technology Initiatives from a Patient Safety Perspective

Patient safety is a principal factor in healthcare facility operations and maintenance (O&M). Ongoing initiatives to help track patient safety information and record incidents and close calls include Common Formats and International Classification for Patient Safety (ICPS). Both efforts aim to develop ontologies to support healthcare providers to collect and submit standardized information regarding patient safety events. Aggregating this information is crucial for pattern analysis, learning, and trending. The purpose of this paper is to analyze these existing efforts to see how much facility and facility management information is covered in the existing frameworks and how they can interface with new systems development. This analysis uses documented cases from literature on healthcare associated infections, inputs the data from the cases into the information categories of Common Formats and ICPS, and identifies gaps and overlaps between these existing systems and facility information. With this analysis, connections to these efforts are identified that serve as a leverage for showing the role of healthcare facility information for assessing and preventing risky conditions. Future work will use these findings and the supported ontology to connect patient safety information to a building model for supporting facility operations and maintenance. The aim is generating and interpreting high-level information to provide effective and efficient patient safety in a healthcare environment.

A Case Study of BIM-Based Model Adaptation for Healthcare Facility Management—Information Needs Analysis

Facility management (FM) is responsible from the proper functioning of building systems, such as mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire protection. The increased level of complexity in building systems means more work for the owner’s FM personnel. The FM work has unique challenges for finding the right resources of information to detect faulty systems and deficient pieces of equipment. This paper is focused on how Building Information Modeling (BIM) can support FM operations for buildings with more complex systems and strict operation and maintenance requirements, such as healthcare facilities. In order to get a better understanding of the dynamic environment in which the FM operates, a period of work shadowing has been arranged with a healthcare building owner. Case narratives are formed as an outcome of the shadowing experience and process models are created to identify the basic workflows. These workflows include the interactions, decision points, documents and information exchange among the owner’s personnel. Based on these process models, information needs have been discussed in order to extend the functionality of BIM and add value to FM personnel’s operation and maintenance activities.

Asset Data Handover for a Large Educational Institution: Case-Study Approach

AbstractOwners of multiple facilities who maintain large capital portfolios are challenged with efficient maintenance to streamline operational processes and costs. Clearly defined and structured i...