Eliminate the zombies!

Reflecting on a successful career and tenure as president of the American Society for Health Care Engineering (ASHE) has led me to a refined interpretation of ASHE’s tag line, “Optimizing the heath care physical environment.” I define our profession as creating and maintaining up-to-date facilities optimized for energy and operational efficiency and hardened to minimize the impacts of adverse events — all while supporting patient safety within the physical environment.

To succeed in this mission, we need to adopt a lean, innovation-centered mindset. At the 2025 Health Care Facilities Innovation Conference™, keynote speaker Diana Kander introduced the idea of “zombies” — long-held processes or policies that have outlived their original purpose. Many aspects of our profession fit that definition. “Simplified” doesn’t necessarily mean “improved”; modernizing the regulatory environment should involve evidence-based methods to sunset non-value-added codes, standards and tasks. A new approach to advocacy might be, to quote the rapper Snoop Dogg (who Kander hailed as a leader in innovation), “Drop it like it’s hot.”

Meanwhile, even though the planning, design and construction (PDC) industry has adopted new technologies to streamline processes, other suboptimal practices have persisted (“same as last year,” or SALY, to borrow another Kander-ism). Siloed responsibilities in the PDC process have resulted in ever-increasing deferred infrastructure task lists. Capital budgets must include funding to resolve existing infrastructure conditions that cannot stand on their own — a little lagniappe to address deferred maintenance!

Sustaining that innovation also means building the health care facilities management career ladder and supporting next-generation leaders. As the field becomes even more technically complex, how do we attract “trade handy” talent and ensure they have a career path within health care? Many qualified facilities leaders have both emotional intelligence and technical know-how with building systems. This is a high-value combination, and those leaders need to be compensated accordingly. As Snoop further opined, “If you stop at general math, you’re only going to make general math money!”

Stay focused on defeating the zombies and SALYs in your career path. Back to the basics can be innovative!