2026 Healthcare Facilities Innovation Conference

Health Care Has a Water Problem. HFIC Is Where the Industry Can Solve It.

The 2026 Health Care Facilities Innovation Conference, formerly known as the ASHE Conference, runs August 2–5 in Minneapolis. For health care facilities professionals, it is one of the most concentrated opportunities of the year: four days of peer exchange, practical sessions, and direct access to people working on the same problems they face back at the facility.

Garratt-Callahan will be at Booth 432. Here’s what brings us to this event, and why water safety belongs at the center of this conversation.

A Conference Built Around Real Health Care Facility Decisions

ASHE organizes its conference programming around the decisions health care facility managers make every day. The 2026 agenda includes sessions on workforce development, real-time AHU reset logic, and lithium battery integration and safety — organized into tracks covering Compliance, Maintenance and Operations, Risk Assessment, Sustainability, Project Management, and Energy Management.

The ASHE conference themes map directly to the pressures that health care facility teams are navigating at any given time. Water safety, compliance documentation, risk mitigation, construction and renovation impacts, and long-term system reliability are not side topics in a health care facility. They are core responsibilities — and they show up in survey prep, capital planning, and daily operations alike.

 When a facility’s water safety program isn’t current, the exposure isn’t only operational — it extends to clinical outcomes and regulatory standing.

Water Safety Belongs on the Agenda — Because It Already Is

Health care buildings carry a water-safety burden that most other facility types don’t. Immunocompromised patients, complex plumbing configurations, aging infrastructure, and ongoing renovation activity all create conditions where waterborne pathogen risk requires a structured, documented response.

ASHRAE 188 established the framework for Water Management Programs in health care settings, and regulatory expectations around compliance have continued to tighten. When a facility’s water safety program isn’t current, the exposure isn’t only operational — it extends to clinical outcomes and regulatory standing.

The professionals attending ASHE aren’t looking for theory. They’re looking for approaches they can implement, conversations that sharpen their compliance footing, and vendors who understand the environment in which they’re working. That’s the kind of exchange ASHE is built for, and it’s exactly why water management belongs in this conversation.

The Water Safety Expertise Behind Booth 432

Garratt-Callahan’s water safety practice is built for health care — not retrofitted for it. Our team includes ASSE 12080 Certified professionals whose work spans Legionella and other waterborne pathogens, environmental testing, ASHRAE 188 Water Management Program development and implementation, construction and renovation risk, mitigation strategies, and case investigation. As standards continue to evolve, including ANSI/AAMI ST108 for medical device water quality, our work reflects the increasing connection between water systems, sterile processing, and patient safety.

ASSE 12080 certification represents a defined standard of competency recognized by regulators and accreditation bodies. In practice, it means our team can look at a health care water system, identify where risk lives, and support the facility with documentation and controls that hold up under scrutiny — whether that’s ahead of a survey, during a renovation, or in response to a positive environmental sample.

Garratt-Callahan’s health care water safety services also include supplemental disinfection with chlorine dioxide, point-of-delivery barrier filtration, third-party Legionella sampling and testing, and staff training tied to compliance requirements. These programs are designed to support alignment with our current and emergency standards, including ST108. These aren’t standalone offerings — they’re part of a program-level approach designed for facilities where water safety decisions carry clinical weight.

Visit Garratt-Callahan at ASHE (HFIC) 2026 Minneapolis

If your facility is building a water management program from the ground up, refining an existing approach ahead of a survey, managing waterborne pathogen risk during or after renovation, or evaluating supplemental disinfection options, Booth 432 is a good place to start that conversation.

You can also review what Garratt-Callahan brought to the 2024 ASHE (HFIC) Annual Conference to get a sense of our approach to these discussions. Want to connect before the conference? Explore our health care services or reach out directly.

Find us at Booth 432, August 2–5 in Minneapolis. Connect with the conference community using #ASHE26.