In February 2017 Christine Guyott FCSI RD was honoured with Foodservice Equipment Reports’ Industry Service Award. A principal of Rippe Associates, Guyott is a hugely respected consultant in the healthcare sector. Here she discusses three milestone consultancy projects that have defined her career.
Stanford Hospitals and Clinics (SHC), California
1) Stanford Hospitals and Clinics (SHC) is a 600-bed hospital with another 200 beds in a paediatrics children’s hospital, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital (LPCH). The campus is large and spread out, but Bob [Rippe, founder of Rippe Associates] and I were fortunate enough to do a master plan there in 2008, and since then we’ve continued to do both spaces. Most of my career has been working with Stanford, and it’s just now getting built. In California it takes a very long time to actually construct hospitals, because of the seismic requirements and regulations. You’re trying to manage these over a long period of time. And still make a successful project for them in the end.
Mount Carmel System, Ohio
2) One of the first interviews Connie [Dickson FCSI, principal, Rippe Associates] and I went on after Bob [Rippe], left was the Mount Carmel System in Ohio. They had a new foodservice project called St Anne’s Medical Center. It was one of the first interviews and the first RFP we did without Bob. It was my first complete project process without Bob. So it was very important. It was a complicated project, but from drawing it and working with a great management team, it turned out really well. There was a good synergy between the foodservice team, our group and the architects. Even though it was challenging, I think we worked through the obstacles. It wasn’t an ideal space because of the shape and the flow – everything had to come and go from one side of the corridor. So we had to figure out how to get the dining to flow naturally. We’ve now worked on four Mount Carmel projects, all with different architects. So the system kept us as their designer. It was really satisfying and liberating. My job is fun.
North Pine Area Hospital, Minnesota
3) North Pine is a small critical access hospital in Minnesota. We had to figure out what they were going to do for foodservice. Because they had a kitchen in their nursing home for 80 beds with ten beds in the hospital. We had many different options and opportunities to figure out how to deliver food, because it is too small to do two kitchens. They had two dieticians on staff who were fabulous. They wanted to think about how we could do this differently. So we developed a little kitchen for this micro hospital that was going to be based loosely on the hotel bistros. We have a full menu of salads and sandwiches you can serve out of a cold pan. They can prepare hot foods: ribs and pizza and different items. When you’re setting a room service menu, people are only there for two or three days. They don’t need to have extensive options – just a good core menu. So we developed a basic program that didn’t require a hood and used an accelerated oven. It was a fun project. We just worked really well together, developing options and presenting them.
Read more:
Read the full interview with Christine Guyott in the Q2 edition of Foodservice Consultant, here (page 58).
Michael Jones
