I\u2019ve spent the past six years leading multidisciplinary design for complex regional healthcare projects, and I keep returning to this sector for a simple reason: many regions have long lacked resilient infrastructure and have had to be incredibly resourceful in keeping services running. That\u2019s why this work matters to me \u2014 the infrastructure and services we design genuinely make a difference in people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through working on regional health projects, I\u2019ve learned that success isn\u2019t just about technical solutions \u2014 it\u2019s about listening, collaborating and placing patients and staff at the heart of decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If I sketch my ideal regional hospital of the future, several defining features stand out:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of all, it\u2019s a hospital that grows with its community. A robust masterplan, tied to a model of care, scalable, and standardised facilities, with infrastructure support to make that possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coordination with central and local systems<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Successful regional health projects start with aligning the masterplan and project aspirations with wider regional infrastructure programmes and long\u2011term development plans. Electrical networks, water, wastewater and stormwater networks, and transport connections should be considered early so that a hospital integrates effectively with broader regional planning rather than existing as an isolated system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Planning must also align with evolving models of care, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n As designers, we must also safely manage transitional impacts between new developments and existing hospital operations, particularly where construction is happening in a live healthcare environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Transparent and meaningful engagement<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Early and meaningful engagement with iwi and mana whenua plays a central role in shaping land use, water stewardship, sustainability outcomes and cultural design integration. Working closely with local councils and utility providers further supports alignment between infrastructure planning, campus staging, master planning and consenting pathways, reducing impacts and avoiding unnecessary contribution requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Providing structured engagement with local authorities throughout the consenting and approvals process helps maintain momentum. Transparent communication throughout delivery is equally important, so that evolving project scopes remain aligned with policy settings, iwi and mana whenua expectations and broader public outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Engineering for resilience and decarbonisation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the most significant shifts underway is the transition to electrification and decarbonised energy systems. Health facilities are becoming increasingly dependent on electricity as the primary, centralised energy source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The electrification transition is reshaping long-term infrastructure planning and investment priorities by:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Collectively, this shift represents a fundamental repositioning of how energy systems are designed, managed, and funded across hospital sites, where decisions made now will shape decarbonised strategy, resilience, fuel security, cost and sustainability outcomes for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Learning from other jurisdictions and leveraging global expertise<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Regional health challenges aren\u2019t unique to any one country, and there is a lot we can gain by drawing on global experience. Benchmarking across jurisdictions helps shorten delivery timeframes by using proven approaches rather than reinventing the wheel. We\u2019re already seeing several international trends that are highly relevant to regional healthcare delivery:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our global firm operates in a way that we can draw on offshore subject\u2011matter experts whenever needed and benchmark our work against the lessons learnt from innovations and proven approaches from similar projects delivered across the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Balancing long<\/strong>\u2011<\/strong>term performance with today\u2019s realities<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Affordability is a pressure on every project, and regional developments often feel this more acutely. The goal is to create buildings that are adaptable, low carbon and cost effective to maintain without overstretching budgets. This requires:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Flexibility needs to be designed in from the outset, not retrofitted later. By anticipating growth, change and new technologies, we can maximise the building\u2019s operational life and ensure it continues to serve its intended purpose well into the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This forward-looking approach is especially critical in live hospital environments, where upgrades and staged works must be delivered safely and with minimal disruption to patients, staff and clinical operations. It also helps keep future refurbishments and fitouts cost comparable, without triggering major upgrades or wholesale replacement of core infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why this work matters to me<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Regional hospitals play a crucial role in supporting the health and wellbeing of communities across Aotearoa New Zealand. They deserve the same level of consideration, investment and design rigour as larger metropolitan facilities \u2014 and in many cases, they require even greater resilience and flexibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Engineering services are central to this. They shape environments that are comfortable for patients and staff, keep clinical spaces clean and sterile for safe care, and provide the robust, resilient systems that engineering and maintenance teams rely on every day. When these systems are well designed, they quietly enable everything else to function.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I value the opportunity to contribute to this work: shaping infrastructure that supports patient care, enables clinical teams to do their best work, and remains robust as needs evolve. Projects like these reinforce the purpose behind what I do \u2014 creating environments that strengthen communities and the people who deliver care every day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Having worked on regional health projects, Hamza Hijazie shares that success isn\u2019t just about technical solutions \u2014 it\u2019s about listening, collaborating and placing patients and staff at the heart of decision-making.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1142,"featured_media":21631,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[166,168,157],"tags":[148,6364,1955,154,6828],"yst_prominent_words":[4072,359,6156,366,3634,614],"class_list":["post-21630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-architecture","category-design-planning","category-healthcare","tag-architecture","tag-building-design","tag-design","tag-healthcare","tag-indigenous-relations"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21630"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21646,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21630\/revisions\/21646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21630"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
System pressures and risks<\/strong><\/td> Strategic response and outcomes<\/strong><\/td><\/tr> Increasing exposure to grid and network risks<\/td> Drives staged, strategic investment that strengthens resilience and sustainability, and reshapes asset ownership and governance models<\/td><\/tr> Potential mismatches between facility demand and regional supply when master planning and utility planning are not aligned<\/td> Support coordinated regional planning and early engagement with utility network providers to secure long-term capacity and connection pathways<\/td><\/tr> Regional settings where new and legacy systems must operate together, requiring simple and robust designs<\/td> Prioritises manageable, resilient system designs where local capability and remote management are critical<\/td><\/tr> Limited visibility of future utility capacity and development pathways<\/td> Encourages joint planning with utilities so future needs are understood early and resilience measures can be co-delivered efficiently<\/td><\/tr> Heightened need for resilience and redundancy in electrical systems<\/td> Elevates the importance of redundancy, onsite generation, and secure fuel storage to safeguard continuity of care<\/td><\/tr> Rising lifecycle costs and pressure to decarbonise<\/td> Decarbonising infrastructure provides opportunities to reduce lifecycle costs and improves efficiency through heat pumps, low carbon technologies, and smarter energy controls<\/td><\/tr> <\/td> <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n \n
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