Session

Presented by Donald L. Myers, Director, Facilities Standards Service, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; Joe Manganelli, AIA, CHFP, LEED AP BD+C, PhD, Founder, xplr design, llc; and Gary Fischer, AIA, Senior Healthcare Architect, Department of Veterans Affairs Facilities Standards Service Office, Office of Facility Planning, Office of Construction and Facilities Management.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Construction and Facilities Management (CFM) in collaboration with Simulation Learning Education and Assessment Network’s (SImLEARN) Assessment Collaboration & Outreach (ACO) is utilizing immersive simulation through Digital Twin and physical space mock-up technologies to inform VA Standards development and initial project planning/design.

Utilization of these two technologies is being used by a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians, architects and planners, and simulation experts to assess patient flow, staff flow, service/materials flow and potentially identify latent safety threats that may be built into a VA space standard or design project; these are safety threats that cannot be readily detected when visualizing through a traditional 2-dimensional only approach to standards development and project design.