Project Background

You are the Technical Program Manager (TPM) embedded in Facilities Engineering at Kaiser Permanente’s 420-bed urban hospital in Seattle, supporting critical infrastructure for a Level 1 trauma center. The hospital’s Adult ICU (36 beds) is served primarily by a single main air handling unit (AHU-ICU-1) that provides temperature control, humidity control, and pressure relationships (positive/negative pressure) required for infection prevention. The AHU is nearing end-of-life, and vibration analysis indicates an elevated risk of bearing failure.

A vendor has confirmed that a planned shutdown is required to replace a motor starter and install a new variable frequency drive (VFD). The work requires a hard power-down and lockout/tagout (LOTO). The vendor’s window is limited: they can only staff the job next Tuesday 00:00–06:00. If you miss this window, the next available slot is 6 weeks out, during which the AHU could fail unplanned.

This is not a “facilities-only” change. It impacts patient safety, infection control, clinical operations, and regulatory compliance. The ICU is currently at 92% occupancy with 8 ventilated patients, 2 patients on isolation precautions, and a forecasted influx from the ED due to a regional respiratory illness spike. Your job is to plan the shutdown end-to-end and run communications so that the hospital can safely operate through the outage and restore normal conditions without incidents.

Stakeholder Landscape

• ICU Nursing Director: Prioritizes uninterrupted patient care, staffing stability, and minimizing patient moves. Strong voice with the COO.
• Infection Prevention (IP) Lead: Focused on maintaining pressure relationships, air changes, and minimizing risk of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). Will stop the work if controls are insufficient.
• Facilities Engineering Manager: Accountable for executing the maintenance and preventing an unplanned failure. Wants to use the vendor window.
• Chief Medical Officer (CMO) / Hospital Administrator on Call: Ultimately accountable for patient safety decisions and diversion status; wants clear go/no-go criteria.
• Respiratory Therapy (RT) Manager: Concerned about ventilated patients, portable equipment readiness, and room environmental stability.

Competing priorities are explicit: Facilities wants to proceed to avoid catastrophic failure; ICU leadership wants to avoid patient transfers; IP wants conservative controls that may extend downtime; Administration wants to avoid ED diversion and reputational risk.

Constraints

Deliverables (What you need to produce in the interview)

1. A planning approach and timeline from now until shutdown completion (including pre-work, day-of execution, and post-change validation).
2. A communication plan: who you notify, when, through what channels, and what decisions require explicit sign-off.
3. A patient safety and infection control plan: how you will maintain acceptable environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, pressure) and what you will do for isolation rooms.
4. A go/no-go checklist and rollback/contingency plan if conditions deteriorate, the work runs long, or the backup AHU underperforms.
5. Success criteria and monitoring for the first 24 hours after restoration (including what metrics you’ll watch and escalation thresholds).

Complications (Assume these occur unless you mitigate them)

1. At 23:30 (30 minutes pre-shutdown), the ICU charge nurse reports that the ED is sending two additional ventilated patients and requests delaying the shutdown by 2 hours.
2. At 02:15, BAS alarms show rising humidity and a pressure reversal in one isolation room (now slightly positive to corridor). Infection Prevention demands immediate action.
3. The vendor discovers a corroded disconnect switch that may add 90 minutes to the job unless replaced.

Your interviewer is looking for how you make trade-offs under pressure, drive alignment across clinical and engineering stakeholders, and execute a high-risk change with clear ownership, decision points, and safety-first escalation paths.