The Gordionpro project is set to revolutionise hospital planning. The requirements of the users will be placed in the centre of planning with the help of a digital tool.

What kind of problem is the project trying to solve?

At the moment, hospitals worth over a billion euros are being built in Finland. Various actors have requirements concerning these buildings that will have to serve various different user groups flawlessly. The requirements concern logistics, placement, safety and customisability, among other things.  

In some of the hospital projects, planning is based on an architectural competition and its source materials. All projects involve the mapping of user insights on the facilities by using various inclusive methods.

It has been problematic to find out the true opinions of various different interest groups and hundreds of users, process the information into source material that is helpful for the planners and manage changes during the lifecycle of the planning process. The methods of requirements specification and involving planning used in hospital planning projects are versatile and often insufficient. Similar planning errors are repeated over and over again because there are no standardised operating models.

Objective: A hospital building that meets the needs of all of its users

The main objective of the project is to develop a requirement management process that makes it possible to build hospitals that meet the needs of all interest groups. The objective is to describe the requirements of the interest groups accurately to make it possible to use them as a basis for planning.

What is done in this project?

Finnish University hospitals are in the forefront of involving planning at a national level. The project benchmarks the best practices of Finnish University hospitals and models developed in Denmark. The lessons learned will promote the hospital planning activities at a national level.

The University hospitals in Kuopio and Oulu are partners in this project. They offer information on projects already completed and currently in progress in the hospitals, focusing on involving planning methods in hospital projects, current practices in requirements management and areas of improvement.

The requirement review includes the collection of planning data from the databases and archives of the hospitals and interviews with the key personnel involved in the past or current hospital planning projects. 

Based on the results of the requirement review, a digital lifecycle model of the requirements management in a hospital project will be drafted in collaboration with the partnering University hospitals. The focus is on the documentation of the requirements at various levels, tacit knowledge and different insights of the users on a digital platform in a format that is useful for the planners and forms a basis for the planning work.

Systems engineering (incl. requirements management) methods, virtual reality technology and the Modelspace application will be used in the project.

What are the expected results of the experiment?

The issues that have proven to be the most challenging in hospital projects, according to the requirement review, will be tested in the demo environment. When more University hospital partners join the project, new demo environments can be set up to meet their needs.

The lessons learnt in and results obtained from the experiment will be edited into a publication called “Sairaalan osallistavan suunnittelun vaatimushallinta” (The requirements management of involving planning of a hospital). It will include models, methods, tools and examples that actors involved in hospital planning can utilise in their work.

Summarising best practices and creating an integrated model for requirements management and involving planning will help achieve cost savings and better quality in hospital construction projects.

Who benefits?

The results of the project benefit the planners, clinical workers, experts and management of hospital districts and hospitals involved in the hospital planning process.