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.
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.
| Constraint | Details |
|---|---|
| Outage window | 6 hours (00:00–06:00 Tuesday); vendor cannot extend beyond 06:00 due to union staffing limits |
| ICU occupancy | 33/36 beds occupied; 8 ventilated, 2 isolation (1 airborne, 1 contact) |
| Backup systems | Secondary AHU can provide ~60% airflow to ICU but cannot guarantee all pressure relationships; portable HEPA units available: 10 |
| Regulatory | Must document risk assessment and mitigation per hospital change management; must maintain appropriate isolation controls |
| Staffing | Night shift staffing is lean; ICU charge nurse + 1 float; Facilities has 2 on-call techs; RT has 1 on-call therapist |
| Monitoring | BAS (building automation system) trends available; no dedicated facilities engineer can sit in ICU continuously without backfill |
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.