Fernanda Pires is a healthcare planner with over 25 years of experience in healthcare design who is EDAC and Green Belt Lean Certified for Facility Design.
As Director of Healthcare Planning, Fernanda’s passion lies in listening to and learning from her clients’ experiences to create innovative and beautiful spaces which facilitate process and flow in response to each unique client’s culture. Fernanda believes Evidence-Based Design, Research and Lean complement each other in identifying challenges in current processes and providing clear and easy-to-use tools to address them. Used together, these strategies promote staff engagement resulting in the buy-in necessary in healthcare facilities design. Lean allows staff to fully understand the delivery process and have ownership of the changes necessary to improve it.
What excites Fernanda most about Evidence-Based Design is the knowledge that research is not to be used as a prescription, but as a catalyst for innovation that meets each client’s vision while providing tools to measure results and inform new, innovative solutions. Improved patient and staff satisfaction and outcomes are a natural result. Fernanda believes in projects where team members each have a voice and work in a collaborative manner. In her role, she is challenged to look at the project from a high level to the small details, bridging the gap between consultants, designers and contractors while always focusing on the client’s vision. She also believes in having fun in the process.