Dental Specific Joinery and Cabinetry

One of the key components to a new dental surgery fitout is the cabinetry. The requirements for storage in a dental surgery are very different from other medical fitouts, let alone standard commercial office fitouts. Well designed surgeries include many custom designed drawers and storage facilities for files, documents, consumables, hardware and other equipment.

At Commodore we have our own in-house joinery factory where we produce our custom designed dental specific cabinetry. Our cabinetry designs benefit from many years of experience installing and maintaining dental surgeries. The cabinetry needs to be easy to clean, non-porous, ergonomically designed and must last for many years of busy commercial use.

At Commodore we use only the highest quality Blum® fittings, hinges and drawer runners. This ensures precision performance and reliability for many years to come.

Because we manufacture our own cabinetry we control the quality and the timeframe. It is very beneficial to be able to manufacture a cabinet overnight when we really need to meet a client’s emergency deadline.

We are proud to be an Australian manufacturer, and have found we can produce cabinetry as cost effectively here in Australia as we can purchase from overseas, with much faster turn-around times of course.

The Most Cost Effective and Profitable Dental or Medical Fitout Solution

We are just finishing a new dental fitout at Rouse Hill. This is our 5th project in Sydney's growing Hills District this year. The job is an excellent example of a ‘standard’ dental fitout.

The client has asked us to design and build a professional looking, cost effective and efficient dental practice. Over the years we have developed and updated a ‘standard specification’ for dental surgery fitouts. We have learnt from client feedback received after completion what is needed, and what is superfluous.

Data and power points are a good example. We specify a certain number of points in each treatment room. Often clients ask for extra points ‘just to be safe’. While we are happy to accommodate, it is important to understand that everything costs money. We work hard to produce the best fitout we can for the lowest price possible.

We often end up ‘down-selling’ rather than ‘up-selling’ because we know from experience that 6 months later when we are talking to the dentist about their new fitout, they will say ‘Yes, you were right, we didn’t really need that’.

We’ve designed and built countless dental and medical practices over the years. We know what you need. Unless there is something you do that is different to the normal operation of a dental practice, the standard specification is the most cost effective and hence profitable solution for your new dental or medical fitout. Look out for photos of our Rouse Hill fitout on our website soon. You will see it looks great.

Every now and then, we are called upon to build ‘showpiece practices’, that are an expression of the personality and success of the owner. I must admit, it’s enjoyable to work with a more relaxed budget and the results are magnificent. But this situation is a rarity. In most cases our role is to build a cost effective, ergonomic, profitable practice that generates the best possible patient outcomes and dentist income.

How long does a dental or medical fitout take

One of the least understood costs in building a dental surgery is time taken to do it. The actual build of a 3 chair surgery typically takes us about 8 weeks. We have done it in 4 weeks but this involves the added expense of multiple night shifts and weekend work.

Clients need to understand two things in order to control the ‘time cost’ of building a new surgery.

1.       Every week costs you thousands of dollars. Sometimes we watch as clients spend weeks and even months negotiating with numerous suppliers, coordinating their own trades and sourcing materials and equipment from far off places in order to save money. I’m not sure whether if you ‘project manage’ your own fitout and negotiate with individual contractors you save much money on the overall cost of the fitout. Perhaps you do if things go smoothly and you have no issues along the way. What I can tell you for absolute certainty is that:

a.       The amount of your own time spent on this dental fitout will be more than you anticipate and it will effect other areas of your personal and professional life. You can’t effectively manage a construction project without giving up other income earning activities in order to do it. It’s a full time job for the period of the fitout and if you are leaving your other job or clearing your schedule of patients in order to manage the build you need to add up all the lost revenue when working out whether it’s worth it, and

b.       Projects that are self managed take significantly longer to complete. Not 2 weeks longer, but often twice or three times as long. We know this for two reasons. Firstly because we drive past dental and medical surgery fitout projects going on for months, and secondly because clients tell us or come to us later and say “You were right! It went OK but it just went on forever. I just couldn’t get it finished!”

Clients fail to calculate the costs per week of the delay. The cost is not the lost revenue for the weeks when you would have been first open. The cost is the lost revenue of the weeks in the future when your practice could have been at full revenue but isn’t because you were late opening in the first place.

2.       The vast majority of delays occur BEFORE we start building. We can build quickly and efficiently once we know what we are building, and have permission to build it. Help us to minimise delays by:

a.       Designing your project ahead of time. Don’t try and design it as we build it. You need to be able to envisage the layout and commit to it ahead of time. If you struggle to do this then engage us to design it for you and trust that we have done it many times before and we will design you something efficient and professional.

b.       Be available during the design process. Allocate some time to the design of your fitout. Make yourself available while we are designing the fitout and come back to us as promptly as possible with feedback and colour selections.

c.       Plan your council and strata approval ahead of time. These are very common causes of delay. Get your council and strata approval underway immediately once you have selected your site. We can assist with this also if required.

d.       Efficient building requires planning and lead times are critical. We can’t build a dental or medical fitout in 8 weeks with one week’s notice. Even if our schedule is clear, we still need an absolute minimum of about 3 or 4 weeks’ notice to organise materials and book in trades in order for your fitout to go smoothly. Plan ahead and commit to the timeframe. You need to understand that if we delay a project by a week we often loose the suppliers for 3 or 4 weeks because they must move onto their next project and they will complete it before coming back to yours. They can’t wait for you for a week.

Clients often ask, “When will you be finished?”. To which we reply “About 8 weeks after we start”. The best thing you can do to help us finish on time is to help us start on time.

Dental Surgery Workflow

The workflow of your dental practice is critically important to patient comfort and working efficiency. Many architects and designers do not have a good understanding of dental procedures and can therefore make errors in design that are difficult or impossible to rectify after the fitout is complete.

In order to design dental practices that support good workflow we call upon many years of design and feedback from our past customers. We apply a number of standard dental design principles but also remain aware that no two practices are the same.

The design of your practice will need to be tailored to accommodate factors such as:

·         Building size and layout

·         Construction factors or limitations within the base building

·         Number of treatment rooms

·         Type and number of patient visits

·         Number of staff

·         Variety of offerings

·         Consultation areas

·         Type, brand and location of dental specific equipment

·         Type and application of custom dental cabinetry and joinery

The workflow of dental practices is very specific and requires a custom design by a designer experienced in the field.

Dental Surgery Design Services

Commodore Dental & Medical Fitouts offer a range of design services.  We can produce a full design and interior decoration package that is often required for shopping centres where a retail design manager must sign off before we commence.

But we can also produce basic functional design packages for privately owned premises at a fraction of the cost. We have a standard design specification that assists dentists in selecting high quality long lasting finishes from a simple range of combinations. We encourage clients to visit one of our recently completed surgeries to see what our standard specification looks like. We are mindful that we are producing a functional, sharp looking workspace that maximises the potential of the site and the profitability of the practice. Our priority is not to design expensive fitouts that serve only to make our website look flashy at the expense of our clients!

Please contact us and speak to our in-house designer. We will help you produce a great dental practice design and very smart high-end looking surgery at a commercially viable price.

New Check-in Technology

We recently attended the Sydney GPCE event for health care professionals. There was lots to see in the area of dental and medical practice design and construction.

One of the interesting new products was ‘self-check-in’ kiosks for doctors and dentists. The kiosks allow patients to enter their own details into the practice management system when they arrive. Previous patients can also check themselves in before sitting down in the waiting room.

The same functionality is available with a check-in App that can be loaded onto a tablet.

Both systems ask the patient to confirm three points of identification (name, date-of-birth and gender) complying with the RACGP accreditation standards.

Significant reductions in staff costs and document storage can be achieved with the fitout. Many practices are moving towards a paperless environment which also saves valuable space. This space can be utilised for treatment areas and better patient comfort instead.

For more information on technology related with projects of medical fitouts and dental clinics designs and their workspace, please contact us today.

Large Development Sites

We have completed a number of dental surgery fitouts recently on large development sites in Sydney. Increasingly these large sites are presenting some challenges which clients need to be aware of.

Due to the size of the site, the developer simply must impose strict controls to ensure safety and organisation of hundreds of workers on the site from many different contractors. These controls ensure the site does not end up in complete disarray.

However, there is a cost. And the cost is time and money (as usual). Recently we were advised midway through our dental surgery fitout that the main contractor would be laying concrete around our part of the building and access would be denied for the following 5 days. The head contractor can’t be blamed. He was managing a big project, rain delays, union picnic days etc and actually communicated with us pretty well. It’s just something you need to have a contingency for on big sites.

So, if your new dental surgery construction is occurring on one of Sydney’s large development sites, have a contingency for delays. We now build a contingency into our schedule but it’s good if clients also understand that some delays are a construction reality on these sites.

We are always happy to have a chat about new projects. We are happy to provide friendly advice to anyone.

For more information of large development projects of medical and dental clinics, please contact us today.

Site Selection and Council Approvals

We work with many dentists who are taking the leap into owning their own practice. It’s an exciting time but also can be very stressful. Most of the practitioners that we deal with are very proficient health care professionals but are cautious first-timers when it comes to the logistical and financial challenge of setting up a functioning, profitable health care facility.

Selection of a location is one of the fundamental first steps and can mean the difference between success and failure. From our experience, small shopping centres or shops immediately nearbyare the best choice for start-up practices. Pedestrian traffic, parking and exposure are the key elements. The increased rent charged for premises in shopping centres is more than offset by increases in traffic flow and these sites often cater for needs such as parking, and potentially expensive requirements such as disabled access and amenities, fire provisions and compliance with NSW Health infection control policies.

A shopping centre that contains a medical centre, a pharmacy or some other related health care professional provides a definite advantage. Don’t even be scared if there is already a dentist there. Multiple facilities quickly create the presence of a ‘dental destination’ that draws patients from surrounding areas.

Other public amenities that have been seen to make a marked difference in practice success are train stations and schools, and we have also noted a great benefit from commercial office blocks.

It is very common for a surgery to start with one treatment room with space to add another chair once the practice gets up and running. 70-85m2 is a good size that can be fitted out well with one chair, OPG, sterilization room, reception and waiting area, and possibly an administration office and bathroom. A second treatment room is left empty or as storage until the practice patient base justifies fitting it out and using it.

If the premises has existing rooms that are about 3.2m x 3.5m these are a good size for a surgery room, but in most cases we suggest removing existing internal partitioning and re-designing. The cost of new internal wall fittings is more than offset by the improved use of space once the practice is open. We have achieved very comfortable,  ergonomic and profitable layouts in very pokey spaces.

The other point of stress for dentists setting up for the first time is council approvals. Development Applications are very daunting and many don’t know where to start. Council approvals can be painful, time consuming and expensive. From our experience, if you are a dentist you are better off attending to patients and getting someone to do the council approval for you. You can search for a planner near you or ask your specialist medical fitout company to handle it for you.

We found that over the years we became familiar with the regulations and the idiosyncrasies of different councils in the Sydney area. We also found that sticking with one principal certifier helped us enormously. The whole process involves a lot of waiting on hold, and waiting for replies from many different parties like real estate agents, building managers and council or heritage officers. A great deal of the work requires compliance certificates to be issued by the relevant tradespeople so make sure you use trades that are licenced and know their responsibilities under the Building Code of Australia and associated Australian Standards. Developing relationships with some of the parties like certifiers, fire engineers and councils has, in recent times, allowed us to get results much more quickly and at reduced expense for our clients. Provided your premises is already zoned correctly it is often possible to certify a surgery as a Complying Development, negating the need for a full Development Application. This can save you many months and many thousands of dollars of council fees and other costs.

The preliminary site selection and approval process can be daunting but once it’s taken care of you can quickly move into construction and the grand opening of your new practice!

We are always happy to have a chat about any stage of your project. We are happy to provide friendly advice to anyone.

For more information on medical or dental clinic location selection and council approval, please contact us today.