Healthcare Fitouts Australia | Clinical Design & Construction

What every clinical fitout shares

A medical centre, a dental practice, a vet hospital and an optometry shopfront look like four different projects. Underneath, they’re the same four problems in different proportions.

Services Compliance The shell By sector What it costs

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An office fitout puts up walls and lights them. A healthcare fitout has to bring water and waste to every point of care, move air at rates set for clinical spaces, be reachable by someone in a wheelchair, and sit in a building classification that permits the use at all.

Those four things account for most of the gap between a commercial rate per square metre and a clinical one. They are also the four that decide, before you have chosen a single finish, whether a particular tenancy can hold your practice.

Which is why the useful work on a healthcare project happens early, while a lease is still unsigned and walking away is free.

Waiting area in a completed healthcare fitout

Problem one: services

Clinical buildings are wet, ventilated and heavily serviced in a way offices aren’t.

Hand hygiene has to be available where care is delivered, which in a six-room general practice means six wet points not one. A dental surgery needs suction, compressed air, water, waste, power and data arriving at a chair position fixed the day the slab is cut. A veterinary kennel needs graded drainage and a hose point. An optometry consulting room needs controlled light and a six metre optical working distance.

On a slab-on-ground tenancy that means trenching. On a suspended slab it means core-drilling and a route through somebody else's ceiling, which somebody else has to agree to. It’s the single most common reason a floor plan that works on paper doesn’t work in a building.

Problem two: the documents that gate your opening

These apply across all four sectors, in different combinations. None of them are optional, and all of them are cheaper to design for than to retrofit.

AS 1428.1 and the DDA: Accessible entry, circulation, door approaches, an accessible sanitary facility and a counter usable from a seated position. This is the requirement that most often rules a small or upper-level tenancy out entirely. AS 1428.1 explained, and the separate ambulant cubicle requirement.
AS 1668.2: Mechanical ventilation and air change rates. Base building plant sized for an office frequently cannot meet clinical rates, and finding that late means either a landlord negotiation or supplementary plant with nowhere to go.
AS/NZS 4815 and 4187: Reprocessing of reusable instruments, wherever you reprocess on site. These set the layout of the sterilisation room, and which of the two governs you changes the room.
National Construction Code: Building classification, fire separation, egress and sanitary provisions. A retail tenancy converted to clinical use usually changes classification, and a facility performing procedures may become Class 9a. Which class is a clinic? and what triggers Class 9a.
Radiation licensing: Shielding designed by a consultant and a premises licence from the state regulator, wherever imaging is used. Runs alongside construction rather than after it.
Sector requirements: The RACGP Standards for accredited general practice, laser controlled areas for cosmetic clinics, and the licensing regimes that apply to day procedure facilities.

Problem three: what the landlord is actually handing you

The largest single swing in a healthcare fitout budget, and it’s decided in the lease rather than the design.

A warm shell arrives with conditioned air, a ceiling grid, lighting, sprinklers, an accessible path of travel and often a bathroom. A cold shell is a concrete box with a power supply and a water point.

The difference is routinely $350 to $550 per square metre before a single finish is chosen. On a 200 square metre clinic that is $70,000 to $110,000, which is larger than any decision you’ll make about joinery.

Neither term is used consistently, so the answer is not to ask which one it is. Ask for a written schedule of base building services at heads of agreement.

Warm shell versus cold shell, in detail

Problem four: the approval, which is where your opening date lives

Builders quote construction, and construction is the predictable half. The approval in front of it’s where programs are actually won and lost, and it varies more between councils than construction varies between builders.

A change from retail or office use to a health-care use is assessed on its own terms: parking provision, amenity impact on neighbours, waste storage, hours of operation, signage and accessible access. None of those are questions about your drawings, and all of them can stop your project.

How approvals work in NSW, Victoria and Queensland

Where the four sectors diverge

Medical centres

A throughput problem. Patient flow, waiting capacity for the busiest hour, and acoustic privacy between consulting rooms. Specialist and day procedure work sits above it again.

Medical fitouts

Dental practices

A services problem. Everything arrives at a chair position fixed the day the slab is cut, and the sterilisation room has to satisfy a one-way flow.

Dental fitouts

Veterinary clinics

A noise and hygiene problem. Patients that bark, escape and must be kept apart, plus drainage and washdown finishes wherever animals are held.

Veterinary fitouts

Optometry practices

Two briefs in one tenancy. A shopfront that has to sell frames, and a clinical suite behind it needing controlled light and a six metre working distance.

Optometry fitouts

Laboratories

Containment, benching and services. Specimen paths that do not cross, extraction where it is needed, and equipment with real power and heat rejection.

Laboratory fitouts

Hospital and day surgery

Class 9a construction, ventilation designed by an engineer, reprocessing to the higher standard, and a licensing pathway that can dictate rooms.

Hospital fitouts

What a healthcare fitout costs

Indicative planning ranges, on a warm shell, excluding clinical equipment and GST. Published so you can rule a tenancy in or out quickly, not after three meetings.

Ambulatory care

$1,200–$2,600

per m² · dental through optometry

Dental $1,200–$1,800. General practice $1,400–$2,200. Veterinary $1,500–$2,300. Optometry $1,600–$2,600.

Every range, with inclusions and exclusions →

Specialist and procedural

$1,800–$3,600

per m² · specialist through day procedure

Specialist rooms $1,800–$2,800. Day procedure $2,400–$3,600, where mechanical services and a change of classification carry the difference.

Hospital and day surgery →

Cold shell

+$350–$550

per m², on top of any of the above

Air conditioning, ceilings, lighting and fire services you would otherwise have inherited from the base building.

Run your own numbers →

Questions

What is a healthcare fitout?

The design and construction of a tenancy so it can be used to deliver clinical care. It covers partitioning and joinery like any commercial fitout, and then the parts that make it clinical: hydraulics to every point of care, ventilation to health-care rates, accessible access, reprocessing where instruments are used, and a building classification that permits the use.

How much does a healthcare fitout cost in Australia?

Indicatively $1,200 to $1,800 per square metre for a dental base build, $1,400 to $2,200 for general practice, $1,500 to $2,300 for a small animal veterinary clinic and $1,600 to $2,600 for optometry. All on a warm shell, excluding clinical equipment and GST. Day procedure sits higher again at $2,400 to $3,600.

What is the difference between a healthcare fitout and a commercial fitout?

Services and compliance. An office fitout puts up walls and lights them. A healthcare fitout brings water and waste to every point of care, ventilates to rates set for clinical spaces, provides accessible access under AS 1428.1, and frequently changes the building's classification under the National Construction Code. Those four things are most of the cost difference.

Do all healthcare fitouts need council approval?

Most do, because the use is changing. A tenancy last occupied by a shop or an office sits in a different use class to a health-care facility, and that change is assessed on its own terms. Parking, waste, hours and accessible access are usually what the decision turns on rather than your floor plan.

How long does a healthcare fitout take?

Construction on a typical 150 to 250 square metre clinic is a matter of weeks. Design, documentation and approvals in front of it are usually the longer half, and they vary far more between councils than construction varies between builders.

More on the full FAQ page, or read the guides.

Healthcare fitouts