The winners of the Sustainability Class of the 2013 Building Better Healthcare Awards are
Award for Innovative Alternative Use of Energy
This award recognises a product, process or service that has utilised alternative forms of power to reduce energy use and cut costs within the healthcare estate
Winner: Fife Acute Hospital - and Hulley and Kirkwood Consulting Engineers
The new £170m acute facility at Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy, was handed over and open to the public in January 2012.
It was described by the judges as ‘a highly-successful example of how a carefully-considered design, co-ordination and construction method derived through designer/contractor collaboration can help to safely deliver a sustainable and cost-efficient new healthcare facility’.
Two notable features of the project are the extensive use of prefabrication for the M&E elements of the project, and a new energy centre providing the electrical supply and standby power generation for the entire site.
Using offsite prefabrication for the M&E elements of the project provided a more-sustainable way of delivering the scheme by reducing waste. It also reduced time by 270,400 man hours compared to a traditional M&E approach.
The new energy centre serves the retained estate on the site by supplying a new MTHW distributed heat source. The existing retained estate steam mains are to be decommissioned over time and replaced with this low-carbon heat source.
The energy centre features a 725kWe combined-heat-and power plant, two 1MW wood-chip boilers, thermal accumulators, a 300sq m below-ground bunker for the wood chips, and an automatic wood-fuel feed system for the biomass boilers.
The CHP unit and biomass boilers provide base-load heat demand and power for the new facility to reduce energy costs and carbon emissions. Together they are expected to reduce carbon emissions by over 1,400,000kg a year.
Dynamic simulation modelling of the building and envelope by H&K identified the optimum levels of thermal insulation for walls, floors, roofs and glazing. In addition, solar glazing to those facades exposed to the sun resulted in smaller heat gains.
Air-handling plant for ventilation includes heat recovery to recover about 800kW of heat from exhaust air systems. AHU and pump motors operate under variable volume auto control regimes.
To help keep the building running efficiently, the building-management system monitors energy meters to enable the early recognition of operational problems so they can be diagnosed and rectified quickly.
Award for Best Carbon Reduction Project
This award recognises a product, process or service that has helped to reduce the carbon footprint of the healthcare trust involved
PC Power Management solution, PowerStudio, picked up the award for Best Carbon Reduction Project
Winner: Improving the carbon footprint of the NHS with PC Power Management solution, PowerStudio (Certero)
Barts Health NHS Trust has a PC estate encompassing 26 buildings and the PC Power Management project needed to apply multiple power-saving policies to various organisational units.
Certero was able to deploy its PowerStudio solution across more than 5,500 PCs and laptops. The innovative project has helped to reduce the amount of carbon credits being purchased and provide evidence of carbon savings to satisfy the CRC scheme. It has played a critical part in improving the trust’s green credentials and reputation for promoting energy-efficient IT use.
The project has involved setting up power-saving profiles for each PC across the trust’s estate. Each monitors its usage patterns and determines when it can be powered down. One of Certero’s major discoveries was the high overnight power waste of 85%. This meant the potential energy savings could recoup the cost of the solution within four months.
The system also benefits from a parameter driven interface allowing management to ask questions with ease. Answers are displayed through easy-to-understand charts, graphs and widgets. This allows the involvement of key stakeholders including IT managers to study overall power usage in fine detail and establish areas to save power, reduce bills and reach green energy targets.
Fiona Daly, the trust’s environmental manager, said: “The results from the trial quantified the evidence for the savings to be made and the quick return on investment made the solution very attractive. It is a solution that all organisations should consider as it provides the necessary functionality to reduce energy and significantly decrease carbon usage.”
Using Certero PowerStudio solution, the trust is driving savings of £10,000 a month and will save a total of £600,000 over the next five years.