Primary care centers are establishments with elevated social relevance and high operational energy consumption. In Chile, there more than 628 family healthcare centers (CESFAM) have been built in the last two decades and with plans for hundreds more in the next few years. We revised the architecture, construction management and energy performance of five CESFAM centers to determine possible instances of overall improvement. Staff was interviewed, and state documents reviewed, which allowed the conceptualization of the architectonic and energy structure of the centers, as well as the process of implementation. At the same time, energy simulations were done for each one of the centers, controlling for different climates, construction solutions and orientations. Our study revealed that strategies employed by the primary healthcare centers in Chile have aided a progressive implementation of establishments with elevated costs and materialization times, as well as neglect for climatic conditions. These energy evaluations show relevant and consistent impacts of the architectural form and material conditions, especially in southern zones, demonstrating the need to work with shared knowledge resources such as BIM. There is a clear necessity to define technological, morphological and construction strategies specific to each climate zone in order to achieve energetically efficient and intelligent healthcare establishments.

The main objective of this communication is to determine the characteristics and requirements of the BIM model, in particular in relation to the BPS energy analysis, to be used as a project tool that supports sustainable management in existing hospital establishments. With this objective, BIM architectural models and environmental simulations of representative buildings in Chile and Spain were carried out to review and propose attributes of sustainable models that allow a better adaptation to growth and flexibility from the early stages of design and restructuring. This study associates low energy consumption strategies for hospital establishments. The study is aimed at the integral management of both the operation of the building and all the services involved in its use and exploitation. This will allow to discuss the paradigm changes regarding the training of the architect and the specialists involved in the design, construction and operation of more sustainable projects. A post-publication change was made to this article on 3 Jul 2020 to correct an author affiliation.