This seems like a tremendous advantage and one hopes the framework of figuring all the elements in determining the level of government regulation required to be met, spreads into other areas.
One size does not fit all.
Hospitals may save billions in seismic retrofits
By Gilbert Chan - gchan@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PST Wednesday, November 14, 2007
State building regulators will decide today whether to use a new high-tech tool to assess the seismic safety of hospitals, a proposal that would delay or erase billions of dollars in retrofits and reconstruction.
The staff making this and other emergency proposals expect approval from the California Building Standards Commission since no organized opposition has surfaced. In the past, labor groups have criticized hospitals for delaying the building improvements.
For years, hospitals have lobbied the state for relief, arguing nearly half of the operators are struggling to stay in business and can't afford to be saddled with costly upgrades at this time. Some predicted that facilities would shut down because it would be too costly to retrofit them in time.
"It is important that we keep (hospital) access available," Daniel Gross, board chairman of the California Hospital Association, said during a conference call Tuesday. "The economic challenges will not go away based on the (new) criteria.
Hospitals will have to continue to look at how they will finance future seismic construction."
If building commissioners adopt a customized software assessment model developed for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, hundreds of California hospitals, grappling with the escalating costs and a deadline of 2013, would get a reprieve until 2030.
The delay, however, is not the biggest reason for cheer among hospital companies. The new software model is likely to cut by half or more the number of buildings classified as being at high risk of a collapse during a major earthquake.
"There has been a lot of expertise poured into this effort," said Evan Reis, a structural engineer and president of Certus Consulting Inc. in Oakland. "They have made a very careful effort not to treat (it) as a black box."
About 1,100 hospital buildings rank in the high-risk category using current seismic standards, and the final price tag for their retrofit was expected to surge to $110 billion.
Using the new software model, the number of high-risk buildings is estimated to drop to 550 to 660. No one has yet projected how this will affect long-term costs. The lengthier timetable alone, though, is expected to give hospitals $4.6 billion in savings.
Unlike the current method, which primarily looks at the structure of a building, the new process also would consider factors such as soil conditions, proximity to earthquake faults and an area's history of seismic activity.
