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Healthcare
Healthcare facility design is where engineering meets clinical operations, and the margin for getting it wrong is essentially zero. Decisions made early in a project, about how departments relate to each other, how air moves through a clinical zone, how a building performs in 30 years, shape everything that follows. We work on healthcare projects across the UK: from mechanical and electrical building services design on new-build private hospitals to multi-disciplinary delivery on care and extra care developments. We bring technical expertise and a practical understanding of how these buildings function day to day.
Speak to our healthcare facility design specialists
What sets us apart in healthcare facility design
Healthcare buildings don’t just need to be well-designed. They need to perform to specific technical standards, accommodate the daily reality of clinical practice and hold up as clinical models change. The consultancy you appoint matters because the consequences of poor decisions at brief stage play out for decades. We deliver across the full scope of a healthcare scheme (architecture, structural and M&E engineering, BIM coordination and commercial management), with all disciplines working from the same model.
Healthcare facility design operates within a layered regulatory framework. Health Building Notes (HBNs) set out spatial standards for each department type; Health Technical Memoranda (HTMs) govern the engineering systems beneath, covering ventilation (HTM 03-01) and water (HTM 04-01). The CQC’s environmental standards apply to all registered premises, with building regulations as the statutory baseline. Compliance is built into the design from the first brief.
Our approach
Multi-disciplinary healthcare facility design services under one roof
Healthcare projects that fragment across multiple consultancies lose the ability to resolve conflicts before they become costly. Our architecture, structural, M&E, BIM and commercial teams work from the same shared project model. Master planning and pedestrian flow modelling allow us to test clinical adjacency and patient movement digitally, before a single wall is drawn. That kind of early interrogation prevents more expensive problems downstream.
Our expertise
Clinical intelligence applied to every design decision
Healthcare facility planning starts with understanding how the building will be used. Clinical adjacency and clean/dirty flow routing are operational requirements. Get them wrong and the building creates friction for its entire life. Infection control drives engineering decisions from ventilation to surface finish. Research shows that natural light and lower noise levels may be associated with shorter patient stays and faster recovery.
Our commitment
Sustainable healthcare facility design that meets NHS net zero commitments
The NHS net zero 2040 commitment makes sustainability core to every healthcare brief. Healthcare buildings are harder to decarbonise than most: 24-hour operation and heat-intensive clinical processes demand a fabric-first approach that reduces energy use and lifecycle carbon. We carry out BREEAM Healthcare assessments as standard, across a typology range that spans acute hospitals, care environments, secure mental health facilities and life sciences settings.
Healthcare facility design in practice
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Understanding healthcare facility design
These questions come up regularly at the start of healthcare projects.
Healthcare facility design in the UK is governed by Health Building Notes (HBNs), which set spatial standards for each department type and Health Technical Memoranda (HTMs), which cover engineering systems including ventilation and water. The Care Quality Commission sets environmental standards for all registered premises. Building regulations apply throughout, with additional BIM and sustainability obligations on NHS-procured schemes.
Clinical adjacency is the principle that determines which departments must be near each other in a healthcare building. Poor adjacency decisions create operational friction that persists for the life of the facility. Effective healthcare facility planning and design maps clinical workflows first, ensuring that spatial layout supports how care is actually delivered rather than working against it.
Infection control is one of the primary drivers of healthcare facility design services, shaping ventilation specifications, room pressure relationships, surface finishes and clinical flow routes. HTM 03-01 sets the technical requirements for each zone. These are engineering decisions embedded in the design from the outset, not compliance considerations applied after the layout is fixed.
A new-build healthcare facility is designed from a blank brief with long-term adaptability built in from the start. Refurbishment is more constrained. Existing structure, ceiling heights and embedded services all limit what’s possible. Phasing around live clinical operations adds further complexity, making sequencing as important a consideration as the technical design itself.
BREEAM Healthcare is a standard requirement for NHS-procured schemes, with minimum ratings set at project brief stage. For privately funded healthcare facility design projects, it isn’t always statutory, but planning authorities and investors increasingly expect it. Integrating the assessment into the design process from the start produces better outcomes than treating it as a separate workstream.
