Reimagining Construction Drawing Standards
Build Health International is adapting building practices to work better in resource-constrained areas
Half the world’s population lacks access to necessary healthcare—and most of these people live in impoverished communities. Build Health International (BHI) seeks to remedy this by building high-quality health care infrastructure in resource-constrained regions. The first project they undertook was Haiti's Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais (HUM), the country's largest and most advanced public-sector hospital. They faced a number of challenges during construction. Limited and undependable Internet access and slow data rates impeded their ability to share files and cloud-based models at the construction site. A lack of plotters and large-format printers locally meant that construction documents had to be separated into printable sizes. Finally, and most importantly, they found that local construction professionals often lacked formal education and had difficulty understanding industry-standard construction drawings, leading to frequent RFIs and long construction delays. Fatlum Troshani and Allison Denisky share how BHI partnered with an Autodesk Pro Bono Consulting team to evolve their drawing standards and find other solutions. The new drawing standards feature supplemental 3D visualizations, increased legibility, and explanatory contextual text. The BHI team has also compiled their learnings into the How We Build Guide, to help other organizations looking to build with local crews in resource-limited regions.
About the speakers
Allison Denisky is a senior architectural designer at Build Health International. She holds a master’s degree in Architecture from Northeastern University.
Fatlum Troshani is a project engineer with Build Health International. He holds a degree in civil engineering from the Wentworth Institute of Technology.
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