We offer our clients far more than architectural design services. JCA can help you set new standards in the quality and innovation of your services and accommodation. We provide expert advice on health care planning, space utilisation, procurement, town planning and project development, working on our own or with fellow consultants. These skills have been assembled by a team that has worked on a wide range of health-care projects in the UK and abroad with a value of £1.2 billion.

 

John Cooper brings a wealth of knowledge to any project. He has worked with clients to develop the briefs, budgets and functional contents on a range of innovative projects. John has also collaborated on the production of many master plans and business cases and undertaken project reviews for companies and governments.

 

Projects are lengthy, expensive and involve a great many stakeholders and an often considerable risk. It is vital that they start in the right place and are informed by the best advice available. We strongly believe that this is based on an understanding your specific needs and not on the application of standard management formulae. As Health-care architects are all too familiar with business cases that were based on untested assumptions and poor information.

 

The most important task is to understand the real needs of the project, set the basic parameters as quickly as possible and then work out with you how effectively we can resolve the main challenges. Working closely with you we can establish what you need, what is possible and what is affordable. Getting 80% right quickly is much more useful than spending your time and money on honing an answer that might be overtaken by events before it is agreed.

 

We can set out the timeline, organise the decision-making process and advise you on when decisions have to be made. Projects should achieve and then maintain momentum – progressing a scheme at a visible pace pulls everyone along and instils a real sense of purpose and confidence in a successful outcome. One of the questions we raise at this stage is “can you keep up with us?”

 

We like working closely with the project’s thought leaders and strongly advise establishing a Project Steering Group that defines and develops the clinical strategy. This group is key in holding the project vision and mediating, wherever necessary, between the inevitably competing claims for space and/or funding. Where process change and transformation are key elements, they have to be formulated, owned and communicated from within the clinical community.