Noise, dust and disruption are unavoidable side effects of construction activities. When taking place in a healthcare environment, the work must be carefully managed to avoid negatively affecting patient experience, clinical operations, and continuity of care.
Patients, families, visitors, and staff may not understand the controls in operation behind the scenes, but they are highly aware of how the environment makes them feel. In healthcare settings, where people are navigating illness, uncertainty, and complex care needs, restoration and remediation partners have a responsibility to minimize changes to routine while supporting a safe and reassuring environment.
Successful restoration and remediation projects in healthcare settings require more than technical expertise, asserts Angie Wierzbicki, Vice President of National Healthcare Services at First Onsite.
“Emergency restoration and remediation focused on risk management, patient safety, and continuity of care is about more than restoring a space,” says Wierzbicki. “It’s about creating an environment where patients, families, and staff can feel confident that their safety and care remain the priority, even while work is taking place around them.”
The Impact of Construction Projects
Since starting her career as a nurse in 2006, Wierzbicki’s career has spanned diverse roles in quality control, project management, and healthcare operations. Her twenty years of experience have reinforced the importance of partnering with teams that understand the unique challenges healthcare organizations face before, during, and after disruptive events.
Protecting the patient’s experience is just as important as restoring the physical environment, she says.
“When I moved out of a clinical role, my perspective did not change. I brought it with me and embraced it.”
The impact of a construction project and who it affects shapes the mindset of how her team approaches each job. Importantly, they understand situations where the work needs to be carefully contained to control a potential infection risk.
Containment strategies, negative air pressure management, HEPA filtration, and close coordination with Infection Prevention and Control (IPAC) teams are integrated into every phase of a First Onsite project. These measures help prevent dust and airborne contaminants from migrating beyond the work zone while allowing healthcare operations to continue safely.
For high-risk and critical environments such as ICUs, MDRDs, and NICUs, specialized containment strategies are implemented to help protect patients while allowing essential healthcare services to continue with minimal disruption. The First Onsite team works closely with infection control and multidisciplinary teams at the facilities they are called to. In some cases, this can include meeting with the charge nurse to understand the details related to the specific unit and/or shift.
“We look at everything through the lenses of the people on the floor,” Wierzbicki says. “Knowing your adjacencies, understanding which patients are in the immediate environment and categorizing that risk, are pivotal to a successful project. When that alignment happens early, the project runs smoother and feels better coordinated.”
An Empathetic Approach
In healthcare environments, an empathetic approach means recognizing that restoration and remediation activities are occurring around people who may already be experiencing stress, uncertainty, or critical illness. How a project is presented, communicated, and managed can be just as important as the behind-the-scenes controls. Presenting a clean, professional appearance helps patients, visitors, and staff move through the area with greater confidence and less anxiety. Importantly, it allows healthcare teams to remain focused on delivering care while patients, families, and staff are confident that their environment is being managed safely and professionally.
“When whatever is behind those walls is contained and looks professional, I truly believe it makes a difference,” Wierzbicki shares. “When people see a mess — especially at the hospital — it’s going to increase their stress levels. Instead, when done right, it looks intentional and feels like a planned response. It becomes part of the environment.”
Learning from Healthcare Leaders
First Onsite’s active involvement with CHES (Canadian Healthcare Engineering Society) reflects an ongoing commitment to learning from healthcare facility leaders, engineers, infection prevention specialists, and operational teams across Canada. These relationships help ensure the company’s healthcare professionals remain current with evolving standards, emerging risks, operational challenges, and best practices that influence healthcare construction, restoration, and remediation projects.
“Healthcare environments are constantly evolving,” says Wierzbicki. “Being engaged with organizations like CHES helps us continuously improve how we support healthcare facilities and strengthen the safety measures we bring to every project. CHES represents collaboration, continuous learning, and a shared commitment to creating environments that support safe, quality patient care.”
First Onsite Sees Beyond the Project
While many contractors focus primarily on the physical project, First Onsite considers the broader healthcare environment surrounding the work, recognizing that every decision has the potential to affect patients, clinicians, families, and facility operations. That perspective influences everything from containment planning and environmental controls to scheduling, communication, and risk management.
First Onsite works as an extension of the healthcare team, bringing specialized restoration experience together with healthcare operational understanding. Proactive communication and close collaboration with facility leaders, IPAC teams, and clinical stakeholders, reduces disruption and supports continuity of care.
The company’s healthcare leadership team also brings firsthand experience working within quality-focused healthcare environments where risk management, documentation, continuous improvement, and operational accountability are essential. The result is a restoration approach designed not only to repair a space, but to protect the people who depend on it.
If you’d like to understand more about restoration best practices in healthcare environments, please connect with Angie Wierzbicki, Vice President of National Healthcare Services at First Onsite at: [email protected].
