Question: why is designing a hospital harder than normal buildings

Kristen Salzer-Frost answered on 16 Jun 2015:

In a normal building, most of the people are able to walk to the exit by themselves, or with the help of their friends or family. In a hospital, most of the people are sick and they have to stay in bed. The nurses and other workers at the hospital help to move them away from the fire, but it takes up to four people to move a bed, so it can take a long to to move everybody. The building needs to be designed so that there is enough time for everyone to be moved safely before the fire gets too big. Also, it can be dangerous for some of the people to be moved outside (like if they need extra oxygen), so there needs to be a way to keep them safe from the fire without taking them outside.
There is also a lot of special equipment that needs to go into a hospital that is very important. For example, you can’t have a sprinkler in the same room as an MRI machine. This makes it harder to design the hospital as you can’t just put things where ever you want like in a normal building.