Achieving operational continuity by design - The Ottawa Hospital
Meeting operational continuity for hospitals located in a seismic area is a formidable challenge even with modern building codes. This is because despite more stringent design force requirements for high importance buildings, codes are inherently minimum standards designed to ensure life-safety of occupants in the event of an earthquake, and do not rigorously enforce any non-safety performance objectives. Furthermore, each building system is designed by a different profession without a holistic view on the overall functional performance of the integrated building. Under the standard practice, operational performance after a design event cannot be evaluated, and is likely not achieved following the prescriptive code-based design. Hence, for a state-of-the-arts healthcare facility in Ottawa which is expected to enhance the resiliency of the healthcare system in the capital region, the explicit evaluation of operational continuity objectives at the onset of the design process is an effective approach for orienting all the professional disciplines to deliver a hospital that will remain operational post-earthquake.
In support of the structural consultant and the architect, Kinetica Risk evaluated the functional continuity performance of the tallest towers in the new Ottawa Hospital Civic Campus using our S-RAMP platform, which utilizes customized Monte Carlo simulations following the state-of-the-arts ATC-138 post-earthquake recovery methodology. The building performance model for this assessment was customized based on the review of the clinical plan and occupancy layout, and it accounts for the building contents, sub-system components, and the anticipated functional requirements of every medical unit. Explicit evaluations of functions for each building systems, including envelope, vertical transportation, structural, heating and cooling, water and electrical, were performed to assess operational continuity. This information aided the owner in identifying the common scenarios for interruption of operations in each medical unit and the most cost-effective approach to achieve functional continuity in a holistic view, which guides project delivery.
