and the Work of Healthcare Technicians
(But not only them)
FEATURED PAPER
By Eng. Daniela PEDRINI, President
International Federation of Healthcare Engineering
Italian Society of Architecture and Engineering for Healthcare
Modena, Italy
ABSTRACT
For project managers the impact of COVID-19 has been hugely challenging. A reliance on working remotely has obstructed the collaborative approach often shared among a traditional team environment. Lockdowns have caused major disruption to supply chains, exponentially increasing the risks related to managing projects. In a world beyond COVID-19, project management remains the key to success for many healthcare projects and building work.
Managing the complexity – as throughout the pandemic – requires a new set of technical skills and goals can be reached with extensive communication, collaboration and innovation.
The Covid-19 pandemic has presented an array of novel and acute challenges and serves as a reminder that we live in a complex and unpredictable world. The article demonstrates the complexity from a scientific perspective, offering a framework for creating resilience and agility in an uncertain future.
One key area of focus is the creation of customized flexible spaces in healthcare and adaptive reuse. Another aspect of the article examines futureproofing and design flexibility management. In addition, the use of Value Management approach and BIM will be explored in the context of emergency accommodation providing the opportunity to transform the pandemic experience into more agile and resilient learning systems.
Keywords: Covid-19, design, futureproofing, healthcare, project management, reuse, value management.
A RESULTS ORIENTED GLOBAL EXPERIENCE
The impact of COVID-19 has been profound for all aspects of project management, but the recent development of project management techniques will become extremely important and useful for the future, especially in the post-emergency reconstruction phase.
The global experience in dealing with the COVID-19 emergency has been strongly “results-oriented” overcoming the barriers of professional definition and organizational ones that limited the ability to work together. Throughout the emergency, everyone had to and knew how to go immediately to the “heart” of the problems and find the best solutions together to give people an adequate response (both in the different phases of evolution of the pandemic and in the management of the largest vaccination campaign ever faced).
The joint work of all professionals (doctors, directors, nurses, pharmacists, healthcare engineers, IT engineers, clinical engineers, engineers management, architects, etc.) has highlighted a great “added value” determined by multi-professionalism and interdisciplinarity, demonstrating that the managerial skills are not something extraneous and additional to the technical and professional skills of those who work in the hospital and healthcare world, but an integral part of the professional identity.
All professional roles and positions of responsibility move in highly dynamic contexts, in which not only knowledge and know-how count, but knowing how to deal with others, in conditions of great uncertainty.
In particular, the function of middle management is precisely that of being authoritative and recognized in terms of technical and professional skills and that of knowing how to move and relate within the company by leading their group or operating unit. A more complete middle manager is thus outlined, one who knows how to make use of managerial tools through which to influence corporate decision-making processes more effectively.
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How to cite this paper: Pedrini, D. (2022). How COVID-19 will Impact the Future of Project Management and the Work of Healthcare Technicians (But not only them); PM World Journal, Vol. XI, Issue VIII, August. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/pmwj120-Aug2022-Pedrini-how-covid-19-will-impact-future-project-management-and-healthcare-work.pdf
About the Author
Daniela Pedrini
Modena, Italy
Engineer Daniela Pedrini lives in Modena (Italy) where she earned Classical High School diploma; she holds a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Bologna. She has a long career in the health sector, with important roles in the management of technical aspects of the hospital. She was Director of the Technical Department and Planning, Development and Investments until 2021 and now Director of Asset Management of the Hospital-University Sant’Orsola Polyclinic, one of the major hospitals in Italy, and Health Authority of Bologna. She has directed a multimillion PFI contract for the total renovation of the hospital’s energy production.
She is an Expert in Economic Engineering (AICE / ICEC certificate – International Cost Engineering Council n. 60). Project Manager of complex procedures for renovations and new hospital constructions, she is certified by CERTing, the National Agency for the Certification of Competence for Engineers, Certificate number MOB-4621-IT21 Advanced – “Expert Building Systems Engineer, specializing in Project Management and Hospital Construction Processes”.
She is Project Manager certified PMP® by PMI (n. 3200285), ISIPM-base, ISIPM-Av® and AICQ SICEV (Project Manager UNI 11648 n.0403). She has served as speaker in many conferences in Italy and abroad, and teaches in many healthcare engineering courses and university masters.
Daniela is Co-founder and present President of “Italian Society for Healthcare Engineering and Architecture (S.I.A.I.S.)”, President of IFHE (International Federation of Healthcare Engineering, 2020-2022) and Past-President of IFHE-EU. She has been honored with a medal of the Italian Republic Order of Merit. She can be contacted at info@siais.it.
