National healthcare capital project benchmarking--an owner's perspective

Few sectors of the economy have been left unscathed in these economic times. Healthcare construction has been less affected than residential and nonresidential construction sectors, but driven by re-evaluation of healthcare system capital plans, projects are now being put on hold or canceled. The industry is searching for ways to improve the value proposition for project delivery and process controls. In other industries, benchmarking component costs has led to significant, sustainable reductions in costs and cost variations. Kaiser Permanente and the Construction Industry Institute (CII), a research component of the University of Texas at Austin, an industry leader in benchmarking, have joined with several other organizations to work on a national benchmarking and metrics program to gauge the performance of healthcare facility projects. This initiative will capture cost, schedule, delivery method, change, functional, operational, and best practice metrics. This program is the only one of its kind. The CII Web-based interactive reporting system enables a company to view its information and mine industry data. Benchmarking is a tool for continuous improvement that is capable not only of grading outcomes; it can inform all aspects of the healthcare design and construction process and ultimately help moderate the increasing cost of delivering healthcare.