The tower will be built above the hospital’s newly expanded emergency department.

It will comprise:

• new operating theatres with pre-operative and post-operative beds;
• expanded maternity services including birthing suites and maternity beds;
• a new intensive care unit with modern technology and facilities; and
• a new Central Sterile Services Department, giving the doctors and nurses at the Monash Medical Centre the reusable medical equipment they need to get more people off waiting lists and into surgery.

Traditionally, architectural designs would be reviewed and tested using only 2D drawings, 3D virtual models, or physical architectural prototypes.

However, in a warehouse in North Melbourne, the design team is using overhead projectors to cast architectural plans for the Monash Medical Centre Tower Expansion Project onto an open floorspace. This allows clinicians, nurses, back of house staff, engineers, project managers and designers to walk through full-scale floor plans of the new facility.

Clinicians have pushed wheelchairs and moved patient beds around, as well as tested the spatial practicality of doorways and ensuites. In addition, architects have used iPads to view the layout, interiors and sightlines in 3D.

Rochel Rosler, deputy chief operating officer at Monash Medical Centre, Monash Health, believes the approach has helped the feedback process.

“It’s surprised me how it’s brought up a lot of conversations about workflow,” he said. “I thought it would just be about doorways and beds, but it’s actually about how the whole clinical workflow is going to come together. I think we really have genuinely made some differences [in the design] that will go through to the build.”

Robert McIlwraith, principal project manager for the Monash Medical Centre Tower Expansion Project, Victorian Health Building Authority, commented: “We’re working on the detailed layout and functional design of the rooms we’re building. So we’re interested in things such as the number, type, location of all the furniture, fittings and equipment. As well as things like building services, so where all the power points, data points, medical gases, nurse calls systems are each located in the rooms.

“Being able to project the plans at a 1:1 scale gives us invaluable insights into the design. It’s as close as we can get to viewing the final product well before it’s built.”