In this episode of Raising Tech, our two hosts, Patrick Leonard and Amber Bardon, have a candid conversation about the important role technology plays in Senior Living new construction design.
Discover more about what's to come for the future of technology in Senior Living communities by listening to Parasol Alliance's latest podcast episode.
Raising Tech is powered by Parasol Alliance, The Strategic Planning & Full-Service IT Partner exclusively serving Senior Living Communities.
In this episode of Raising Tech, our two hosts, Patrick Leonard and Amber Bardon, have a candid conversation about the important role technology plays in Senior Living new construction design.
Discover more about what's to come for the future of technology in Senior Living communities by listening to Parasol Alliance's latest podcast episode.
Raising Tech is powered by Parasol Alliance, The Strategic Planning & Full-Service IT Partner exclusively serving Senior Living Communities.
Welcome back to Raising Tech, a podcast about all things technology and Senior Living. Today, I'm your host, Patrick Leonard, and I'm really excited to interview someone who needs no introduction. Our other primary host for the Raising T ech podcast, Amber Bardon. Hey Amber!
Amber Bardon:Hey Patrick.
Patrick Leonard:So today we're gonna dive into a topic that we're hearing a lot about lately and working with a lot of our clients on, and that's new construction technology design. So to set the stage for the discussion, Amber, can you educate our listeners a little bit about what does new construction technology design mean from a high level for those who aren't familiar?
Amber Bardon:Sure, so, projects that we get involved with for our clients that involve technology design and new construction encompass what the name suggests. So it can be brand new construction, brand new buildings, but it also applies to any remodeling that's happening in the community. If a community is doing any type of painting or remodeling or things like that, that can be a great time to do things like enhance Wi-fi, put in access points because if you're already doing work in the room and you're opening up ceilings and things like that, it can be more cost effective to try to make any technology changes at that same time. So what we're going to talk about today really applies to either one of those situations or a variation of either one of those situations anywhere between complete design from the ground up as well as remodel or renovation of existing buildings.
Patrick Leonard:Awesome! Thanks for that overview. So to start things off, who are kind of the key stakeholders involved in a project like this? There's a lot of different hands in the bucket at different times I imagine. Can you talk to our listeners a little bit about who those folks are?
Amber Bardon:Definitely, and this can be a very complicated and confusing part of these projects. Oftentimes we start working with clients and I start asking questions around who are the key stakeholders or who are contracted for different parts of the design and building configuration, and a lot of times the client isn't exactly sure because there's so many different parties involved. There's the architect team, the construction team, low voltage vendors, and so the very first thing I like to do when starting a project like this is to do a project kickoff meeting and bring everybody together so we can have a conversation and actually run through a matrix that I've created that talks about all of the different components that are needed from a technology standpoint and really identify who is responsible for what, have certain things already been contracted, are certain things not contracted, there's nobody identified and really clarify who has responsibility for what components of the project and then to keep that communication open and ongoing. So have a weekly status call, send status updates on a regular basis, just to make sure that all the key stakeholders are involved because there can be a lot of moving parts with these types of projects.
Patrick Leonard:So given all those different stakeholders and people involved in this process, who is typically the community looking to take the lead on all this, right? Is it the IT vendor, is it the architect, is it the community representative themselves? I imagine someone has to be kind of the main pointof contact at the end of the day, make decisions and keep everybody marching along in the right direction.
Amber Bardon:Yeah, again, this is something that there's no one standard and this is why it's important to identify what's contracted under who or things that are not contracted upfront. Oftentimes, there can be an owner's rep that's involved. Sometimes there isn't anybody identified. Sometimes this is contracted through the architectural firm and that there's people involved on that end. Sometimes it is the local IT support. So really, it can, a lot of times the communities don't know, and they're not sure and that's where we bring value in working with clients on these projects because we're able to be that stakeholder who can come in and identify and clarify and ensure that all the components and parts are moving together.
Patrick Leonard:Awesome, thanks for that. So bringing it back to the IT side of things, obviously our specialty and where we engage in these projects. In a perfect world, when is the ideal timing to bring an IT provider like us into the picture for a new construction project?
Amber Bardon:I think it's really important to have technology have a seat at the table from the very beginning. One of the things that I like to ask in these types of projects as soon as possible is what is your technology vision? So what I mean by that is when you think about this building, let's just say with the example of brand new construction. So when this building opens up, what are you envisioning to be offered in this building when it comes to things like robots? Are you thinking about having robots in the building? Are you thinking about having smart home technology? Do you want to have Alexas in each room? And these are things that are not typically thought of in the scope of the IT piece of new construction. A lot of times when people think about the IT design, they're thinking about just computers, they're just thinking about switches, things like that. And they don't think about what are the business side or the business purpose of technology and this building, and that has to be decided upon pretty early on because there's things that again, that you wouldn't normally think of as technology with robotics for example. So if you are envisioning having robots in your new building, robots can't open doors, and I know that there's some companies working on that technology but if that's not available, you need to consider that. Does the robot have a clear floor plan or a clear pathway between where it's going to be going? Do you have charging stations? And so I think identifying that vision upfront is the most important. And then from there you can build out the design to meet the requirements and the technology vision may be very basic. It may not be this, you know, very futuristic, forward-thinking robots and all that. It could just be we wanna provide basic network services to our residents and to our staff or maybe we only wanna provide technology to our staff and we're not going to worry, worry about the residents. But I think making those decisions as soon as possible will help inform influence and help you budget and prepare for the rest of the phases of the project.
Patrick Leonard:Awesome. That makes sense. And so where do we typically start? You just rattled off a lot of different things and a lot of different aspects and considerations to take into account when getting started. So where do you start?
Amber Bardon:I recommend starting with that project kickoff meeting that I referenced earlier and bringing all the stakeholders together to talk about a lot of the things that I mentioned already. So first of all, that's where we can talk about your technology vision. We can talk about what are your expectations for a couple of key areas. Wi- fi is the big one. I personally believe we're in a Wi-fi crisis right now. We're heading towards a Wi-fi crisis. I think more and more communities are really gonna need this wall-to-wall Wi-fi and that's simply not planned for or budgeted in a lot of new construction projects that I've been involved in. And to me that's a huge missed opportunity. Even if you don't plan to have advanced technology such as wearables and smart homes at the moment you open the building, you wanna be prepared to be able to offer that in the future. And there's also staff considerations to think about when we think about Wi-fi. So even if you don't again wanna offer Wi-fi to residents, but you do want your staff to carry smartphones or devices that they can get alerts from emergency call systems, they need to be able to have Wi-fi throughout the entire building and have that be continuous. So identifying what are the ways you're planning to offer network services Wi-fi? Are you okay with putting access points in the resident rooms? What is your security vision? How do you envision cameras being used in the building? Do you want them in the hallways? Do you want them in common areas? Do you want them external? How about door access? Do you plan to have key fobs on every door? Just the mudrooms. All of these things are gonna be associated with a cost. So the sooner we can identify some of these big decisions and how you wanna proceed, the sooner we can get to coming up with an actual realistic budget to prepare for these. Another thing to consider is if you're adding a new building to an existing community, do you wanna use those same systems and extend them or are we starting from scratch? I usually see a couple of different combinations here. So if a community is building a new building and they already have existing buildings, they either love or hate the systems that they currently have. So they either want to extend what they have or this is a good chance for them to pick new systems to put in the new building with the intention to later retrofit those systems back into their existing building. So in that case we wanna go through a requirements analysis and help them select the best possible systems.
Patrick Leonard:Great. Thanks for providing some concrete examples of systems and considerations to take there. So this all sounds super expensive,<laugh>, it sounds, it sounds very expensive. I'm sure there's a wide range of costs associated with this depending on the community of course. But can you give us just an idea for a community that's embarking on something like this, what are rule-of-thumb costs associated with a project like this that they should be aware of and building into their budget right away?
Amber Bardon:I can definitely share some rule-of-thumb estimates, and I know you mentioned that this is very expensive and that is completely true. But the biggest issue I see is that none of this or very little of this is planned or budgeted for. So I would definitely argue that it is an expensive item but it's gonna be a lot worse hit to your budget if you don't plan for it upfront and then you find out later that you do need to put in that$200,000 nurse call system for example. So as far as some rule-of-thumb estimates when we talk about Wi-fi, if you take away nothing else from this meeting, I would like you to at least take away the idea that you need to do wall-to-wall Wi-fi, and it needs to be specked appropriately to handle all network needs from voice to streaming, et cetera. So wall-to-wall Wi-fi, we generally use$2 a square foot. That would include hardware cabling, subscriptions and licenses and all of that. Now that's not always a hard-and-fast rule because it may depend on the construction of the building. If there's a lot of cinder block or concrete or things like that that we see in older buildings, you may need more access points. But$2 a square foot is a pretty good rule-of-thumb for Wi-fi, and that can even be for an existing building placing the Wi-fi that you have currently. When we talk about other types of low voltage systems such as security systems for access control, which would be the key fobs on the doors, we can estimate about$2,500-$3,000 per door. Again, that would include hardware, cabling, power, all of that security cameras we can use about a thousand dollars per door, again includes cabling. And then for emergency call we can consider around a thousand dollars per room. So those are some general rule-of-thumb estimates that people can use.
Patrick Leonard:That's great! That's super helpful. So we've kind of talked thus far about perfect world. If you were brought in from the start, from an IT perspective, if we budgeted all these things from the get-go, we have this perfect alignment between all the different stakeholders involved in this project. But what if that didn't happen? What if an operator gets into a situation for a new construction project and they didn't properly budget for these things? Your IT isn't brought in at as early of a stage as you would've liked. What do you recommend doing that stage?
Amber Bardon:Unfortunately, this is a pretty common scenario and this is one of the reasons why I wanted to do this podcast. We also spoke on this topic at national LeadingAge last year because this is often an afterthought or thought about way too late in the game. I was actually speaking with one of our partner's architectural firm and he mentioned they had reached out to us because of this issue of not having IT involved and he mentioned that they're taking out cabinets and things like that to try to fund the IT side of things too far down the road. That being said, it does happen that this is not thought of, it's not planned for. So I would say again, if nothing else, I'm gonna sound like a broken record here, but if nothing else, try to get that wall-to-wall Wi-fi in, that's gonna be your foundation. If you put that in to start with, it's gonna be much more cost effective to do it at that time versus to go back and try to cable and install it later. So if you can, I would say the priority is definitely that wall-to-wall Wi-fi and then the networking equipment necessary to support that and then the systems that have to do with life safety, you wanna make sure that you can get those in. So emergency call, I know that a lot of communities are building AL IL and they're not considering emergency call for IL. I'm starting to see that change. I'm starting to see more communities wanna put in some type of emergency call system in IL because residents are asking for technology that can be used to help keep them safe and that may be something a little bit outside of a traditional emergency call and maybe more like an active monitoring system or a life safety check-in or something like that. But I would definitely make sure that you have those things accounted for and if you need to cut other things, you know security cameras, you could always do later door access, you know, you could always just use keys. That technology is not as essential to the life safety and to the future of the building as the other systems that I mentioned.
Patrick Leonard:So, we're doing a handful of these projects right now with clients and we've done a lot, we're learned more and more with each project because each one I'm sure has its specific nuances and and key kind of findings and learnings. But outside of just being brought into a project sooner, are there other common mishaps you see or things that you wish we would've or the operator or another stakeholder would've known sooner that would be helpful pass along to our listeners?
Amber Bardon:I think a lot of it comes down to budget and schedule. I have yet to see any project that has an adequate technology budget to cover all of the different aspects. So what I would consider to be included in an adequate technology budget would be Wi-fi, which I already mentioned, the closets, so everything that needs to go in the technology closets from racks to UPS devices to switches, all the cabling that's associated cabling between the closets, internal and external connections, all of the devices. So computers, tablets, laptops, docking stations, monitors the phone system and actual phones, mobile phones, printers, copiers, digital display, security cameras, door access and emergency calls. And then there's other things like time clocks, point-of-sale, other business systems, things you may need to support the enterprise systems you're using to run the community. So I've yet to see any budget that encompasses all of those things. So I think definitely having an appropriate, and you may not have the detail on all of those items, but to have an appropriate amount set aside I would say is something that is lacking, and then the other piece of that is schedule. So, because people don't think about this, they realize they need it too late and then it's a rush job so they want it within a few days or two weeks or something like that and especially if we need to pick new systems, do system selection, do requirements analysis, that can take some time. Even doing a Wi-fi design takes a couple of days. So again, bringing it in as soon as possible, making sure you have enough time to properly spec out the, the technology needs because these are, like you said earlier, Patrick, these are expensive systems and we don't wanna just throw something in there without, you know, adequately having the time to vet it to make sure it's gonna go the distance for the community. And then I would say just the last part of, you know, things that you know, you should know upfront or lessons learned is just the communication piece. There's a lot of changes to schedules, there's a lot of moving parts and sometimes the technology team, again is not updated on those things. So I think definitely having a regular status call, making sure that everyone's in the loop is really important and I've seen that that that kind of falls off a lot of times or left out and then there's a lot of scrambling last minute or things aren't ready when they need to be. So I would just make sure that everybody knows deadlines for things like we need to have the nurse call system up and running by this state. We need to have the network up and running by this state. So making sure it's clearly communicated to everybody as well as all the components that need to be done around those due dates and then keeping everybody updated as schedules may change.
Patrick Leonard:So with everything happening in the new construction space and everything happening in from a technology perspective, where are things going next? I guess what new innovation consideration should communities be considering as part of this process? If budget were no option, what would the ideal teched-out community look like?
Amber Bardon:This is a favorite topic of mine and I wanna refer listeners back to a podcast we did with Pi Architects firm because we talked about this topic a little bit. And I'm actually going to quote their president in what he said. So he, I asked him to walk me through if a new building was opening up with money, no object, what would the resident's day-to-day look like? And his vision was essentially that the resident would be woken up by custom music playing. They would have a greeting, you know,"good morning, Mrs. Smith, here's your activities for the day." This is what's on the menu for breakfast this morning. Here's your reminder to take your medications as they were to walk down the hallway. They would have customized music playing for them. They would have pictures changing on the wall. They would be wearing devices that would be tracking their health and their vital signs. There would be experience rooms in the community, kind of like virtual reality so that residents could have different journeys and travel as part of their life enrichment program. So I think that that's a really amazing vision. It sounds like an amazing place to live in the future. I don't think we're quite there yet, but I do think in the next 10 years we're going to see a definite shift. I think we're going to start seeing in the next 10 years, residents and family members go to a potential community and ask questions like, what technology do you have to prevent me from falling? What technology do you have to monitor me to make sure I get up every morning? What technology do you have for me to communicate with you if I do fall or if there is an issue? And so I think a lot of these things that are, we think of as innovative right now are gonna become expected requirements. I think residents are going to want to have whatever they have in their homes, if they have Alexa, they have Google Nest, they have things like that in their home, they're going to expect and require that when they move into a community. I think they're going to look for life safety technology like falls prevention, falls management, more innovative nurse call functions like the monitoring that I spoke about, the resident engagement applications, which will have a portal for all of their activities and information for the day and things about the community that can order meals right from their phone or place a work order, contact the front desk. So I definitely think all of that is coming along with the things I spoke about earlier with robotics and AI, and I think it's an exciting time. But again, all of that comes down to having that core Wi-fi. I'm gonna mention that again at the end here because again, I want that to be a key takeaway for everybody.
Patrick Leonard:Yeah, I was thinking about that previous episode as well and just kind of putting myself in the shoes of a potential resident or resident in the future, Senior Living, teched-out community and and how cool that would be as a resident, as an adult child, and really as a staff member. So it's really cool to think about and that's all that stuff you just mentioned is not far off. It's happening right now. It's just not many people have pulled all of those pieces together and and allocated the budget towards it. But I do think it's gonna be become more cost effective to do all those things and it's gonna be added into the budget sooner, which is really cool. So thanks so much for the conversation today, Amber. Are there any final thoughts or words of wisdom on this topic before we wrap up?
Amber Bardon:I'll just add what I say on a lot of different topics that we talk about here at Parasol Alliance that we present on is it all comes back to shifting this mindset away from when you're thinking about new construction and remodel. Just thinking about IT as my computer or IT just as my switch account and how many switches do I need to, again, incorporating the idea that technology is a lot more than that. That it's AI, business intelligence, robotics, all these things that we talked about on this episode, and shifting that mindset to how can technology help enable us as a community, increase resident engagement, increase staff happiness through technology, and how can we make sure that that's all incorporated and accounted for in what we're doing both today and in the future. How do we make sure that that's incorporated both today and in the future?
Patrick Leonard:Awesome. Thank you for that. Well Amber, thanks again for the conversation today and listeners, thanks for tuning into another great episode of Raising Tech. Hopefully you picked up some valuable information from our discussion today, and if there are any topics you want to hear about or want to be on an episode yourself, please feel free to reach out on our website at www.ParasolAlliance.com. Have a good one!