Overcoming Design Challenges in Senior Living: Sunrise Senior Living's Fohlio Success Story

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Introduction

Sunrise Senior Living, a pioneer in senior living, has been at the forefront of creating comfortable, welcoming, and safe environments for residents. With a deep understanding of the unique needs of seniors, the company has continuously evolved its design approach to meet the changing demands of the industry. Keep reading to learn about the challenges faced by the senior living design industry and explores how Sunrise Senior Living has leveraged Fohlio to overcome these hurdles and enhance its design process.

Trends in Senior Living Design

The senior living industry is experiencing a shift towards creating more residential-like spaces that prioritize comfort and independence. There's a growing emphasis on open floor plans, natural light, and the incorporation of technology to enhance residents' lives. However, balancing these modern design elements with safety and accessibility requirements presents a significant challenge.

Challenges Facing the Industry

The senior living design industry faces several key challenges:

• Balancing aesthetics and functionality: Creating spaces that are both visually appealing and safe for residents with varying abilities.
• Incorporating technology: Staying up-to-date with technological advancements while ensuring seamless integration into the living environment. "We want to ensure that our spaces are future-proof," says Nicole Bergquist, Senior Design Director as Sunrise Senior Living. By designing with flexibility in mind, Sunrise can easily adapt to new technologies as they emerge.
• Managing costs: Balancing design aspirations with budgetary constraints, especially in an era of rising material and labor costs.
• Efficiency: Streamlining the design process to meet project deadlines while maintaining high quality standards.
• Securing project funding: with increased interest rates, labor prices, and material prices, being able to accurately report on project estimates has never been more important. 

Overcoming Challenges with Fohlio

Sunrise Senior Living has found a valuable ally in Fohlio to address these challenges. The platform's ability to centralize design information, improve collaboration, and enhance efficiency has been instrumental in optimizing the design process. Nicole states that "our capacity to get the work done within a finite amount of time in order to deliver our projects on time and within budget has improved significantly." 

Sunrise Senior Living has found that Fohlio's ability to provide detailed project documentation and cost breakdowns has been instrumental in securing financial support. "The ease of printing reports from the system has been very helpful for us as we move through the process to get funding," says Nicole. By offering transparency into project expenses and demonstrating the value of design investments, Sunrise has been able to secure necessary funding for their initiatives.

The Project Lifecycle with Fohlio

Fohlio has become an integral part of Sunrise Senior Living's design workflow. From initial concept development to final installation, the platform supports the entire project lifecycle. Designers can create mood boards, specify materials, and manage budgets within the system. The ability to track project progress, collaborate with team members, and generate reports has significantly streamlined operations.

The Overall Impact of Fohlio

By implementing Fohlio, Sunrise Senior Living has experienced several positive outcomes:

• Improved efficiency: Faster project turnaround times due to streamlined processes and centralized information. "The ability to search how often we've specified something in the last year is invaluable," says Nicole. 
• Enhanced collaboration: Improved communication and coordination among design teams and stakeholders. 
• Cost savings: Better budget management through accurate cost estimates and material tracking. Fohlio's cost management tools have also been instrumental in helping Sunrise optimize their budget. "The transparency of data has been huge," says Nicole. "We can quickly identify areas where we can save costs without compromising design quality."
• Data-driven decision making: Access to valuable insights and analytics to inform design choices.

Why Sunrise Senior Living Selected Fohlio

Sunrise Senior Living chose Fohlio for several reasons:

• Continuous improvement focus: Both companies share a commitment to ongoing improvement and innovation.
• Customization options: Fohlio's flexibility allowed Sunrise Senior Living to tailor the platform to their specific needs. Nicole shares that "the processes that we had in place (prior to implementation) had not changed, which really helped with the adoption of Fohlio."
• Cloud-based accessibility: The ability to access project information from anywhere at any time.
• Strong customer support: Fohlio's responsive support team has been instrumental in the implementation process. Nicole also adds that "the quickness with which you all answer the help desk live help questions and the way that they're archived in that message has been amazing for us especially for an individual designer who's working on something after hours."

Implementation and Beyond

Sunrise Senior Living is implementing Fohlio in phases to ensure a smooth transition. A dedicated team of designers worked closely with Fohlio to customize the platform and develop standardized processes. The company also provided comprehensive training to all team members to facilitate adoption.

Sunrise Senior Living continues to explore ways to optimize its design processes using Fohlio. Future plans include expanding the use of the platform to include additional project phases including procurement and product quality tracking for a more seamless workflow, reduced manual data entry, and deeper insights into project performance. 

By sharing their experiences with Fohlio, Sunrise Senior Living hopes to inspire other organizations in the senior living industry to embrace technology and improve their design processes.

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