QD Design is a HUB-certified architecture and MEP engineering firm in Cypress, Texas that designs assisted living and senior living facilities across Texas — sealed mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering, with architecture available under the same contract — with completed senior-living work in Tyler, Texas and Royal Palm Beach, Florida. Senior-care buildings carry life-safety weight that ordinary residential design doesn’t: infection-control-aware ventilation, emergency power provisions, and accessibility in every unit, designed in from the start rather than retrofitted at plan review.
What a Senior Living Permit Set Includes
- Occupancy and life safety: assisted living facilities are typically I-1 or R-4 occupancies under IBC 2021 depending on resident count and evacuation capability — a classification decision that drives construction type, fire protection, and egress before any system is drawn. TDLR/TAS accessibility documentation applies throughout.
- Mechanical: unit-by-unit HVAC so residents control their own comfort, with common-area ventilation designed for infection control per IMC 2021 — air distribution that limits cross-contamination between units, dining, and care areas. In humid climates, dehumidification is the core problem; our Florida senior-living work was driven by exactly that.
- Electrical: emergency backup provisions and egress lighting, accessibility-driven device layouts, unit and common-area distribution per NEC 2023 where adopted, and lighting compliant with IECC 2021.
- Plumbing: fully accessible fixtures with grab-bar rough-ins coordinated in the walls, temperature-limited hot water for scald protection, and fixture counts per IPC 2021 across residential units and care support spaces.
Why One A/E Firm Beats a Separate Architect and Engineer
In senior living, the architecture and the engineering share the same job: resident safety. Unit layouts set grab-bar blocking and fixture clearances; corridor and common-area plans set the ventilation zoning that limits infection spread; the life-safety plan sets what the emergency power must carry. When the architect and MEP engineer are separate firms, those dependencies get resolved by correspondence — slowly, and sometimes after the city has already found the gap. QD Design resolves them at one table. And because senior-living projects review in phases, one accountable firm keeps the responses moving: our Thomas Trace project in Tyler ran through phased city reviews across five months to approval, with MEP responses coordinated against the project architect’s documents throughout.
Senior Living Projects We’ve Completed
- Thomas Trace Assisted Living, Tyler — MEP design across residential units, medical/administrative support space, and common areas: unit-by-unit HVAC with infection-control-aware common-area ventilation, emergency backup and accessibility electrical, and accessible-fixture plumbing with grab-bar rough-ins. Phased city reviews across five months to approval.
- Oak Haven senior living facility, Royal Palm Beach, FL — mechanical (HVAC) design under the Florida Building Code: equipment selection, dehumidification strategy, and duct design driven by the humid subtropical climate, coordinated with the broader design team’s electrical and plumbing scopes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What building code classification applies to an assisted living facility?
Under IBC 2021, most assisted living facilities fall under I-1 or R-4 occupancy depending on the number of residents and their ability to self-evacuate. The classification determines construction type, sprinkler and alarm requirements, and egress design — so it’s the first question we answer, because getting it wrong invalidates everything drawn after it.
How is HVAC different in a senior living building?
Two ways: control and containment. Residents need unit-by-unit temperature control, while common areas need ventilation designed with infection control in mind — limiting air migration between units, dining, and care spaces. That’s how we engineered Thomas Trace in Tyler, and in Florida’s climate the same thinking centers on dehumidification.
Do senior living facilities need emergency power?
Life-safety systems — egress lighting, alarms — require emergency power under the adopted codes, and care operations often justify backup provisions beyond the minimum. We design the emergency and backup electrical scope around both the code floor and the operator’s licensing and care model, as we did at Thomas Trace.
Can you work with our architect, or do you provide architecture too?
Either. On Thomas Trace we served as MEP engineer alongside the project architect through phased reviews; on other project types we provide architecture and MEP together under one contract. Tell us how your team is structured and we’ll scope to fit it.
Send us your floor plan — you’ll have a fee proposal within one business day.