Search

Architectures for health have a crucial role in collectivity: according to international ranking scores (for example, CEOWorld Magazine’s Health Care Index), in Italy, there are very advanced and well-functioning healthcare services, even though many facilities are old and obsolete, unorganized, dilapidated, and sometimes unsafe. It has been estimated that 60% of facilities have been built more than 40 years ago. Recent studies suggest that the service life of hospitals should be set around 60 years; after reaching this age, the structure must be redesigned. The present contribution analyses this “rule of thumb” in relation to its impact on user perception. It adopts a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) method to assess the importance users attribute to the quality of the structure and the personnel working there. Specifically, 9 criteria have been selected, including extrinsic and intrinsic features not directly associated with the abovementioned issues. With this approach in mind, we analyzed the 10 best Italian hospitals’ structures and the quality of treatments. The contribution highlights a significant methodological gap in identifying the relationship between building characteristics and their effects on the service, which are often treated as separate. Thus, the research proposes an innovative method by placing users at the center of the evaluation of priorities. This is particularly crucial in healthcare facilities where all the individuals (patients and staff) and the systems’ processes affect each other. This research line has several possible results; here, it preliminarily involves questioning the 60-year-old threshold for providing highquality services in hospitals.

The management of maintenance activities is an ongoing concern for facility managers in the existing building sector due to its complexity and uncertainty. This applies all the more to cultural heritage as protection, preservation and enhancement are a priority in order to keep the artistic and cultural value of historical assets for future generations. In addition, problems related to the increasingly limited economic resources complicate maintenance management processes. Therefore, it has become a common standard to carry out maintenance activities only when actual emergencies occur, thus causing inefficiencies in the planning of Facility Management activities and an increase in maintenance costs. This paper shows a method to support the management decision-making in maintenance activities through Building Condition Assessment (BCA) processes integrated with Building Information Modeling (BIM) systems. The main objective is to develop a maintenance management strategy and support technicians in identifying maintenance priorities in a practical, simple and automated way in order to optimise procedures and costs. To achieve such a goal, the method proposes a BCA process that uses the following tools: 1) building breakdown structure according to UNI 8290 adapted to historic buildings; 2) a degradation level index and a technological and operational connection matrix to assess opportunity maintenance; 3) field inspections and data collection on Excel spreadsheets acting as external Database; 4) data management in BIM environment using Revit as BIM Authoring Software and Dynamo scripts as visual programming language (VPL) to link external Database to BIM model. The results highlight the important role of BIM in Facility Management of existing buildings and buildings of historical and cultural value by allowing the continuous update of information in a single BIM model for BCA purposes and shows a great potential to support facility managers in managing building maintenance activities and optimising costs.

Historical heritage plays a fundamental role in society. One of the primary targets for European countries is to ensure its safeguarding so that it can be enjoyed by future generations. This paper defines a procedure for the safeguarding of cultural heritage which is often in an advanced state of degradation and threatened by climate change and the increasing number of tourists. The methodology consists of three basic steps: the identification of the technical elements on which intervention is necessary, the assessment of the vulnerability level of these elements considering exogenous factors and the hierarchization of the most vulnerable elements through the application of the Analytic Hierarchy Process. The case study is the “Patio de los Leones” a world-famous site within the Alhambra and Generalife which every year attracts over 2 million tourists to Granada, Spain. The aim is to set priorities for intervention on the 124 “Macael” marble columns according to the need for restoration. The validation of the methodology and management of the data to achieve the hierarchy among the columns was done using an HBIM model.