Healthcare Design - August 2017 - 152

fac e

Time

ON INDUSTRY TRENDS

Atriums in hospitals. They take so
much capital, space, ener-

gy, and effort to maintain
due to smoke control
systems that only function
if there's a fire, which may
never happen. Natural
light is shown to be
critical in many studies,
but I've not seen a study
that shows a big, open
element at the entrance
makes patients feel more
welcome or improves staff
satisfaction.

F AV O R I T E . . .
Q U O T E "He who says he can and he who says he can't
are both usually right."-Confucius
T V C H A R A C T E R I don't watch a lot of TV, but I did
spend some time watching Alton Brown on "Good Eats."
I enjoy how he merges science
and cooking together. Of
course, I put on 10 pounds from
cooking everything he did, so
that wasn't a long-term sustainable idea.
LINE FROM A MOVIE
"220, 221, whatever it takes,"
from "Mr. Mom." I also say
"1.21 gigawatts" from "Back to
the Future" a lot.
S N A C K Healthy: cucumbers.
Not so healthy: mint chocolate
chip ice cream.
FAV O R I T E WAY T O U N W I N D A F T E R A
L O N G D AY Listening to podcasts. I'm addicted to
"The British History Podcast" and am already about
80 hours into it and just reaching Alfred the Great.
I'm a strong believer in continuous learning and
statistics, so listening to history mixed in with several
other innovation and management podcasts while I
relax or drive is great to me. And, yes, I've accepted
that I'm part nerd.

THREE WORDS MY CO-WORKERS
WOULD USE TO DESCRIBE ME

1 hard worker
2 detailed
3 I hope they think of me as a

OUTSIDE THE OFFICE, YOU'LL
L I K E LY F I N D M E . . .
At home with my wife and family. My kids are at the
perfect ages (8 and 5) where they're fun to hang out with
and still think it's fun to hang out with me. This will probably start to change, so I'm savoring it while I can.

JAMES FERRIS

Healthcare operations
manager, TLC Engineering
for Architecture
IT'S NOT UNUSUAL for healthcare
design professionals to talk in metrics-cost per square foot, steps
taken, HCAHPS scores-but James
Ferris, an electrical engineer and healthcare
operations manager at TLC Engineering for Architecture (Orlando, Fla.), takes a personal approach, too. "I try to put our projects into metrics
of 'patients seen this week' or 'babies delivered,'"
he says. "It makes us remember the core purpose
behind the deadlines, requests for information,
and other challenges." Ferris has worked on large
projects, such as Baptist Health South Florida's
new Miami Cancer Institute, where he was project manager, principal, and lead electrical engineer on the 500,000-square-foot project. But he
views smaller-scale efforts, such as an electrical system upgrade for South Miami Essential
(Miami), to be just as important. "These are the
small, hidden projects that we do all the time and
probably affect hospitals the most," he says. "If
we do our job right as MEP designers and engineers, our work goes unnoticed by most because
the lights just stay on."-Anne DiNardo

good leader

152

AUGUST 2017

I've gotten calls in the middle of the night because a
generator didn't start or there's been an outage that
could risk patient lives. That scares me, so I can't turn off
my ringer, and I can't sleep for days after it happens. At
the same time, it humbles me that I'm the person called in
a crisis. It's happened a few times, and you just pray and
hope and try to think as fast as you can for the solution.

THREE ITEMS ON MY DESK

1 photo of my family
2 calculator I used when I passed
my Principles and Practice of
Engineering (PE) exam tests

3 National Electrical
Code cheat sheet

(Amazingly, with all
the apps out there, I
can probably design 75
percent of a project with that overused cheat sheet.)

MY FIRST PROJECT IN
H E A LT H C A R E
A 500,000-square-foot major hospital expansion
and renovation. It had everything you can think of in
it-ORs, cath labs, imaging, a patient tower, phased
renovation, a new central energy plant. There went the
training wheels!

L E S S O N I L E A R N E D O N T H AT
P R O J E C T T H AT I S T I L L C A R RY
W I T H M E T O D AY

W H AT D R E W M E T O A C A R E E R I N
ENGINEERING
I always enjoyed physics and math, and my father was
a mechanical contractor, so I sort of followed in his
footsteps but made my own path on the opposite side of
the construction world as an electrical engineer.

C H A L L E N G E S T H AT K E E P M E U P
AT N I G H T

FERRIS WORKED ON B AP TIST HEALTH S OUTH FLORIDA'S MIAMI
CANCER INSTITUTE, WHICH OPENED IN JANUARY AND HOUSES SIX
LINEAR ACCELERATOR VAULTS AND 84 INFUSION B AYS.

HCDMAGAZINE.COM

The level of deep diligence that you must go to in healthcare. When you put your name on something, you need
to make sure it's right, test it yourself to ensure it works,
and follow through in detail. I take a tremendous amount
of pride in how detailed my designs are, and it's helped
again and again.

TLC ENGINEERING FOR ARCHITECTURE (B AP TIST HEALTH S OUTH)

Big data, analysis,
and algorithms.
Healthcare does some of
this, but there's so much
more coming. I'm a fan
of facts and statistics, so I
think this is good and will
help the industry improve
in the long run.
http://www.HCDMAGAZINE.COM
Healthcare Design - August 2017

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