Health Belo Horizonte is a first of its kind public-private partnership project focused on primary health care in Brazil.

From January 2019 to June 2023, its contractor and designer delivered 46 of what the team submission termed Basic Health Units across the region surrounding Belo Horizonte. The project brought modern health care to around 700,000 people, almost one-third of the city’s 2.3-million inhabitants. Programs such as mass vaccination against diseases like malaria and cholera and family health programs were available, in many cases for the first time, to the peripheral regions and their underprivileged citizens.

The contractor faced a worker shortage exacerbated by the pandemic and did not have enough exterior panels to complete the facilities because of breakage due to shipping mistakes. It also had difficulties in adapting traditional Brazilian building systems to a light steel frame structure, with massive logistics challenges due to working on the number of clinic projects simultaneously required in the short project timeframe.

Photos courtesy of OEC

To streamline design and construction, the contractor and design firm formed a partnership that implemented BIM software for project modeling, allowing a 3D visualization of all 46 structures and their building systems. Training was provided by the project and quality teams to personnel directly involved in construction of units, with the goal of resolving any challenges before they became site problems.

The contractor needed to go beyond design and streamline the manufacturing and assembly process of the unitized exterior panels. In collaboration with IMG Montagens, a factory was set up for industrial construction of the panels in Belo Horizonte. This allowed efficient production of panels necessary for all 46 health centers.

The industrialized approach streamlined logistics and shipping with a dedicated staff for just-in-time delivery and delivered high-quality, structural assemblies without any waste experienced on the first few. The contract required 12-month delivery for a Basic Health Unit. The average execution time for each Health Center was around 9 months and 15 days, the team says.