CHAPTER 4
Building Out Your Urgent Care Center
Tracy Altemus
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BUILDING OUT YOUR URGENT care center requires the coordination of many moving pieces. Selecting the right design and choosing the right construction team are just two of the essential elements that will make the process as seamless as possible. A team with specific experience in urgent care centers, including issues related to permitting and construction, is a benefit to you as the owner because it will navigate the building process in the most cost-efficient and cost-effective way.
Managing the construction of an urgent care center is something you can choose to undertake yourself or assign to a general manager who works on your behalf. There is no doubt that hiring a construction manager will add to the cost of your project up front, but considerable savings can also be realized through the manager’s expertise and know-how. When searching for such an expert, make sure you do due diligence: conduct extensive research and reference checks. Ask your colleagues and others in the construction industry for referrals. Negotiating a flat fee for services rather than a percentage of construction costs tends to reduce risk.
The time elapsed from conception to occupancy of an urgent care facility can vary widely and depends on a number of factors, including whether the building is already standing, the type of licensing required, the length of time required to hire the physicians and staff, and how strict the city and state regulations are. In general, if you find an existing building and face fairly normal requirements, the entire process will typically take 6 to 8 months (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Timeline for building an urgent care center within a leased building. If you are constructing the building too, add 4 to 6 months.
Once you have selected and secured your site, either through ownership or a lease, the design and construction phases can begin in earnest. Usually the floor plan is approved during the site-procurement stage. Production of construction documents or working drawings, which require fine-tuning by the architect and by the mechanical engineer, plumbing engineer, electrical engineer, and sometimes structural engineer, takes 2 to 4 weeks. If there is an x-ray component, a physicist will need to review the drawings and specify the lead-shielding requirements, a task that takes several days.
When the plans are completed, they are ready to submit to the city or county for a permit. Permitting times can range from 1 day to 120 days and average 45 days. During that time, the architect and engineers may have to revise and resubmit the plans to deal with any redlines made to the drawings by the governing authority. While the plans are in the permitting process, they can be bid, and qualification of those bids and any value engineering required can be performed. This process allows you to be construction-ready by the time the permit is issued. Construction normally takes 6 to 10 weeks, including installation of x-ray equipment, phones, security, and computer lines. Occupancy typically occurs after construction.