The emergence of elevators has facilitated the life of urbanites and is an indispensable helper in daily life. However, for hospital facilities that often need urgent transportation, elevators are not only a tool for carrying citizens in and out, but also for treating patients and dispatching emergency medical supplies, etc. It is an important part of the hospital, and its efficiency and stability are very important to the hospital.
Decades ago, a large hospital faced the problem of low operating efficiency of elevators, but there was not enough space in the hospital to install elevators. In the end, the innovative layered design method was used to solve the problem, which greatly improved the efficiency of elevators, and also made the hospital as a whole. Work more smoothly and efficiently.
Written by: Yuan Bailiang, senior engineer and former president of the Institute of Engineers
The lifts in general hospitals are mainly divided into three categories according to their functions. The first is to provide the most basic operation, that is, to pick up most of the general patients, hospital visitors or other medical-related staff, etc., and the other is specially designed for transporting patients. Generally, the area is large and large enough to accommodate hospital beds, etc. As for the other type, it provides logistics logistics services, such as transporting clothing, garbage, and even engineering or building maintenance and repair materials and tools.
As hospital lifts need to transport critically ill patients for treatment or surgery from time to time, lifts not only focus on safety and stability, but also need to improve their carrying efficiency as much as possible. The conversion speed and frequency of mutual visits between hospitals also need to be taken into account; and the hospital has limited space, how to make the best use of the space to set up an appropriate number of lifts to achieve the best performance without occupying the location of other hospital facilities, a lot of projects have to be considered construction industry.
In the past, Hong Kong mostly used the formulas used in Europe and other countries to evaluate the efficiency of elevators to estimate the demand and usage of elevators in different hospital facilities.
The two main parameters are the handling capacity of the elevator, that is, the number of people the elevator can transport to the upper floor in five minutes during the morning "peak period", and the distance between the elevator's average departure time from the main entrance during the period.
However, as more and more hospitals in Hong Kong develop at high altitudes, and in foreign countries where there are fewer skyscraper hospitals, the method of calculating the probability of elevator usage data is gradually not suitable for Hong Kong. In order to estimate the elevator demand for hospitals, the authorities also Do a lot of mathematical simulation research work.
The author remembers that about 30 years ago, a large hospital on Hong Kong Island built a 20-story hospital building. Later, it was found that its elevator was often "congested", and patients or visitors had to wait for a long time for the elevator. ideal.
At that time, the author was assigned to deal with the frequent "long queues" of lifts in this hospital. After several months of careful observation and statistics, the author suggested that the lifts that originally go to different floors should be divided into two groups: high-rise and low-rise. Citizens can take different groups on the ground. Don't lift, reach the upper and lower floors respectively.
This move was not common in those days, and it would also affect some users. If they want to transfer from upper floors to lower floors, users need to "transfer" at the basement lobby.
However, the measures have successfully eased the crowds, reduced the waiting time, and improved the overall efficiency of hospital services.
In addition, in the early years, a lift in a restaurant crashed, causing the community to pay more attention to lift safety issues. The authorities have also formulated a number of improvement measures to ensure the safety of lift users, and focused on addressing the safety problems of lifts in "three-no" buildings. long question.
Hospitals in Hong Kong are also strictly implementing relevant new measures, but hospitals operate 24 hours a day, so it is no longer easy to free up time for elevator maintenance, let alone find a longer downtime period for improvement works, so it is necessary to adjust some elevator services to meet difficulties time, crowd control, and avoid lift maintenance works during peak hours.
In the end, the authorities continued to carry out various improvement measures on the lifts of various hospitals to meet various safety requirements, and newly completed hospitals also reserved a little more lift capacity for maintenance to reduce the impact of the works on the overall hospital services.
"01 Medical Clinic" cooperates with senior engineer Yuan Bailiang to launch a column "Yuantu has you" every Monday to share the big and small matters of engineering and medical care.
Yuan Bailiang has always been committed to promoting the professional development of the engineering field, and he has just stepped down as the president of the Institution of Engineers.
Decades of professional journey are really worth recalling, and I am convinced that later generations may be able to understand the key points of the engineering profession.
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