Accumulation of knowledge and know-how during hospital construction

Abstract

Questionnaire and interview surveys were conducted with hospitals to clarify the status of the accumulation of knowledge and know-how related to a hospital’s construction. The results revealed that 80% of hospitals that engaged in hospital construction did not have any explicitly documented references on information about the hospital’s construction, thereby indicating a lack of knowledge accumulation. Moreover, after about a decade of a hospital’s construction, approximately 30% of hospitals no longer had staff members who had been in charge at the time of the hospital’s construction, thus making it difficult to retain human resources with accumulated knowledge. Therefore, to ensure that useful information is recorded during a hospital’s construction, knowledge and know-how should be documented externally. The results of the interview survey revealed that common methods for collecting information externally included visiting other hospitals, architecture personnel and hospital-building researchers forming hospital-building project teams, and requesting construction contractors to share information. Notably, visits to other hospitals were the most frequently cited means of gathering information from external sources.