Spoilt for choice over technical rules for hospitals in Germany
Contrary to the normal effect of standardisation, those involved in designing and building German hospitals are now spoilt for choice: there are two technical rules – VDI 2167 Part 1 and DIN 1946-4.
The decision as to which of these is to be used for a specific project has to be made by the parties to the agreement, in particular by the planning engineer and the hospital owner.
The VDI Society for Building Services strongly recommends that there should be express agreement on the application of one of these documents at the planning stage.
The organisation tried to avoid this unfortunate situation arising, supported by many comments put forward regarding the drafts of both documents, but the technical differences between the two committees could not be settled.
While some of the comments from the VDI committee against Draft DIN 1946-4 appeared to have been accepted by incorporating parts of VDI 2167 Part 1 into the DIN document, the VDI committee found that this had been done in such a way as to counter the original intention. The guideline committee VDI 2167 Part 1 could, therefore, not agree with the proposal put forward by the DIN committee.
The guideline VDI 2167 Part 1, as it is now presented, was drafted on the basis of the "Spitalrichtlinie" (hospital guideline) SWKI 99-3 of the Swiss SWKI. This guideline is established and defines the state of the art in hospital ventilation in Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands. In the course of its "translation" into a VDI guideline it was further developed and adapted to the current state of the art in Germany.
VDI 2167 Part 1 limits itself to those areas that are specific to hospitals and that are not dealt with, or not dealt with sufficiently, in other documents such as VDI 3803 and VDI 6022. VDI 2167 Part 1 specifies the goal in terms of the protective effect achieved, but does not limit the choice of design engineers of means to achieve this goal.
VDI 2167 Part 1 applies to HVAC installations in buildings and rooms for medical interventions and surgical operations on humans, premises where outpatients undergo invasive surgery, clinics, etc. VDI 2167 Part 1 applies to new constructions as well as to the refurbishment of existing installations.