For the first time, the National Congress on Advanced Architecture and Construction 4.0 includes a specific conference on offsite construction and the social and healthcare sector.

COVID-19 has led to the rapid integration of a totally advanced way of working.

Buildings for social healthcare use – managed housing, hospitals, residences… – account for a very high number of interventions in our country, and it is necessary to analyse a functional programme in order to modularise it, so that the construction phase guarantees the life cycle of the building also thanks to the information collected from the user. This requires collaboration between all the agents involved in order to adapt to current needs. And from the constructor’s point of view, a collaborative construction model has been initiated to solve the client’s dissatisfactions at the end of a project, even when we can consider the Public Administration as this client. Changing the way of working and doing it in trust has introduced Integrated Project Delivery or Lean Project and Works, a concept that did not exist two decades ago and which appeared precisely in the field of hospital construction.

In the meantime, there are the typical impediments of a refurbishment to transform the spaces of hospital rooms and bathrooms. Culture, the architect himself, those responsible for hospital management and regulations must be set against the greater need for information to improve, learn about the place and monitor the information through even Big Data applied in works that are carried out at a distance from their final location.