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You'd think it wouldn't be this way. You'd think that of all the building types, hospitals -- places of healing, after all -- would be the greenest of them all. While it's true that healthcare has been a laggard in the green building movement, it's not completely out of the game. In fact, the Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas, in Austin, recently earned the platinum level LEED certification -- becoming the highest-rated LEED certified hospital to date. And it's not alone among green healthcare centers.
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• Practice Greenhealth is among the industry groups that help healthcare companies become more sustainable.
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GreenBiz.comHealthcare facilities are so energy- and resource-intensive that they represent a tremendous opportunity for improving energy management, while at the same time lowering operating costs and helping reach the goal of improving human health.
But for facility managers who are eyeing an energy efficiency overhaul, getting buy -- in from the folks in upper management isn't always an easy task. After all, budgets are tight and getting tighter.
The key to success is first proving the potential of an energy makeover, and then conveying its importance in financial terms. In other words: Learning to speak the language that C-level executives understand is essential.
A Case Study for Building a Business Case
When Skanda Skandaverl, the current director of facilities management at Lawrence Memorial Hospital in Lawrence, Kansas, started work at the hospital in the late 1980s, the facility was facing massive energy costs but had no plans for reducing consumption.
The hospital had two main buildings. One was constructed in the 1970s and the other was the original facility and many decades older. An onsite power plant, linked to both structures, provided heat through a boiler system and chiller-based cooling for the summer months. The older building was very poorly insulated, however, and this was extremely taxing the boilers and chillers, which were dated. Plus, the motors that churn an air-exchange system -- something vital to a healthcare setting -- were inefficient.
Skandaverl's initial plea for financing to make upgrades in the power plant failed, but that was an educational process for him, because it illuminated the budgeting priorities in healthcare settings.
"Clinical departments get priority," he says, "followed by new equipment with a good ROI. Budget for facilities management tends to rank very low on list."
And so Skandaverl decided to concentrate his efforts on making efficiency improvements that would cost no or little money but were likely to lead to quick savings. His team improved the insulation in the oldest building. It installed more energy efficient lighting. It tweaked its air handling system so that the building lost less of its conditioned air and was more balanced with outside temperatures. And the results of these efforts were evident in decreasing utility bills.
Armed with these results, Skandaverl again approached management. This time, however, he was buoyed by the results of his low-budget changes. He asked for $20,000 to fund the purchase and installation of smart meters that would improve the operation of chillers, boilers and air handlers. Because he had already shown the energy saving measures could lead to real savings, management granted him the funds and the facility saved $40,000 in energy costs during the first year that the meters were used. For upper management, a net savings of $20,000 plus a return on the investment within six months shed a new bright light on energy efficiency. And it fortified Skandaverl's wish to make energy efficiency an even greater focus.
In 1995, Lawrence Memorial expanded the hospital by 95,000 square feet. Skandaverl and his staff met with the architects and engineers and told them "everything you design has to consider energy savings." The new building incorporated skylights and tall windows, and all of the heating, cooling and lighting systems were energy efficient. It paid off hugely: After completing the expansion, the hospital's energy consumption barely went up. In fact, during one month it went down, prompting a visit from the local utility provider to check on the meters.
Image Courtesy of Lawrence Memorial Hospital
