Kevin Sandrella, PE, LEED AP, partner, project manager at CMTA (Prospect, Ky.)
As a partner and project manager at CMTA (Prospect, Ky.), Kevin Sandrella manages and mentors a team of engineers while also deeply engaging in every aspect of engineering systems, promoting cross-functional coordination and knowledge-sharing to redefine standards of care. Through data-driven design, collaboration with manufacturers, and technical innovation, he has established new benchmarks for safety, sustainability, and patient-centered design in high-acuity environments.
In the past year, Sandrella has taken a proactive role in advancing critical initiatives to solve engineering challenges in the behavioral health market. Building on his commitment to institutional safety, he partnered with a behavioral health provider and its risk, nursing, facilities, and legal departments to develop a standardized approach for safely implementing pre-action fire suppression systems in patient units.
Recognizing the unique challenges of smoke detection in behavioral health environments due to UL listing requirements and patient safety considerations, he created a solution using readily available components that met the client’s risk profile and safety needs. The approach also kept first costs low, maximized protection from accidental flooding, and optimized patient safety without requiring onerous staffing to monitor patients.
Additionally, he engaged manufacturers to drive new product design, including the creation of ligature-resistant lavatory fixtures. To address the lack of ligature-resistant card readers for behavioral health environments, he worked with a manufacturer to test and modify its reader backlight design, resulting in a new, safer bezel option. The design also features a white light, instead of the traditional red color, to minimize patient stressors. By rethinking product design from an engineering and clinical perspective, he’s helping to eliminate environmental risks while creating safer fixtures that are now available to the wider market.
Furthermore, working with national behavioral health providers like Acadia Healthcare (Franklin, Tenn.) and Universal Health Services, Inc. (UHS; King of Prussia, Pa.), Sandrella applies real-world performance metrics to projects to ensure that facilities are both energy efficient and more resilient. For example, he developed an efficient approach to emergency power system design that not only provides resiliency but also keeps patients and staff safer during power outages and other emergency situations. By leveraging federal incentives for sustainable design, Sandrella implements these systems at zero additional cost to the owner.
His proactive approach sets an example for how engineers can drive product innovation to solve complex healthcare challenges and reshape how the industry designs spaces for some of its most vulnerable patient populations.
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