Continually meet with patients throughout construction
Dentists sometimes put off improvements to their building space due to the anticipated disruption of their business. Determining how to remodel their office or relocate to a new space when a practice can’t survive without an active patient load can feel like a big risk. However, I’m here to tell you that it's possible to remodel, renovate or relocate with minimal impact to your practice when you use a professional contractor.
Whether it’s a new location or an occupied building, scheduling and flexibility are the keys to keeping a dentist office running smoothly through construction. Because a dentist practice can’t survive very well without actively seeing patients, determining a schedule and a plan prior to construction makes it possible to avoid a detrimental office shut down.
Scheduling for the renovation or addition to an occupied building requires more coordination, but is possible for a dentist to keep seeing patients. A schedule for this type of construction will include phases to keep half of the exam rooms open at a given time, time for temporary construction of make-shift clean rooms to allow for exam or treatment space, or possibly after-hours construction activity. Flexibility of the dental practice to adjust patient flow and equipment relocation is necessary for the project to run smoothly and quickly. Open communication is helpful, too, as the project goes on. Any important events happening within the practice should be discussed with your on-site project supervisor as soon as possible, so they can create or adjust for the space needed. All of this is done with the final end date in mind.
Of course building a new location that is unoccupied is easier to coordinate with only the end date to consider, however the end date is a very serious matter. With the coordination of the move, ribbon cuttings, grand openings and other promotions, as well as keeping up your patient visits, meeting that final date is critical to the future of any dentist’s business. A professional contractor should be able to guarantee they will meet that date.
We rely on the dentist and their staff to help us during the schedule planning phase because it's difficult to guess what their needs will be during construction. As we go through the thought process of how to achieve open, clean space, the dentist and project team are able to pinpoint where and when it will be needed. It also helps us create the most time efficient schedule to get the practice up and running quicker.
For more information on how we can efficiently design and build your dental practice with a guaranteed completion date, please contact Dr. Michael Shepard at 800-965-4278 or mshepard@wolgast.com.
