Auxuro

Construction guide

Hospitals

Hospitals have to keep working after an earthquake, protect patients from infection and run 24/7 for decades. Public projects in New Zealand follow Health NZ’s design guidance on top of the Building Code.

IL4Hospitals with surgery or emergency facilities are post-disaster buildings under AS/NZS 1170.0 [4]
AusHFGHealth NZ’s primary briefing and design reference, with NZ Design Guidance Notes alongside [1]
NZS 8134:2021Ngā Paerewa Health and Disability Services Standard that hospital and aged-care providers must meet [3]

Design framework

Health NZ guidance

  • Project teams use the Australasian Health Facility Guidelines (AusHFG) as the main reference [1].
  • Health NZ Design Guidance Notes add NZ-specific rules, for example on fire engineering, seismic and structural design, and inpatient units [1][2].
  • Ngā Paerewa (NZS 8134:2021) sets the service standard providers are audited against [3].

Structure and resilience

  • Hospitals with surgery or emergency are Importance Level 4; other health facilities with 50 or more residents are usually IL3 [4].
  • IL4 buildings must stay operational after a major earthquake, so plant, pipework, ceilings and equipment are seismically restrained too (NZS 4219).
  • Base isolation is common on new acute buildings.

Building services

  • Ventilation and pressure regimes for theatres, isolation rooms and sterile services.
  • Medical gas pipeline systems (AS 2896), backed up by reserve supplies.
  • Standby generation, water storage and redundant plant (N+1) so critical areas keep running.

Fire

  • Patients often can’t evacuate themselves, so the strategy relies on compartments and progressive horizontal evacuation.
  • Health NZ has a Design Guidance Note on fire engineering for public hospitals [2].

How hospital projects run

  1. Business caseHealth NZ business case through Treasury’s Better Business Cases, then funding approval.
  2. DesignClinical planners and the design team work through AusHFG room data sheets with clinical users.
  3. ConsentFire engineering brief and PS1s; often staged consents for enabling works and the main building.
  4. ConstructionUsually ECI or design-and-build contracts; services coordination in BIM is critical.
  5. CommissioningLong commissioning and validation of theatres and isolation rooms before patients move in.

Tools for this building type

AU / NZ construction map: NZ hospital projectsDuctPlanHydroPlanElectrical plan

Sources

Numbers in square brackets refer to these sources, checked October 2026. Standards and rules change; confirm the current edition with your council and the issuing body before you rely on them.

  1. Health NZ: Reference Inpatient Unit Design Guidance Note
  2. Health NZ: Design Guidance Note, Fire Engineering Design for NZ Public Hospitals
  3. Ministry of Health: Sector guidance for Ngā Paerewa (NZS 8134:2021)
  4. Building importance levels in NZ (AS/NZS 1170.0 summary)
  5. Health NZ: Technical guidelines for the seismic and structural design of hospital buildings