With the NHS striving to achieve their ambitious net zero goals, the challenge is underway to transition hospitals away from a reliance on traditional fossil fuelled heating systems to renewable, energy efficient alternatives.
To meet their targets of reducing directly controlled carbon emissions by 80% by 2032 and achieving a net-zero NHS by 2040, the development of innovative decarbonisation projects is essential, as is ensuring that patient services are maintained throughout their implementation.
Project Development Engineer, Jon Williams, has 26 years of experience in delivering complex energy projects within the healthcare sector. He shares insight into how these projects can be delivered while ensuring energy resilience, why early engagement is essential, and how we go above and beyond to ensure minimal disruption to hospital and its patients.
Balancing decarbonisation with hospital operations
While the transition away from fossil fuels has its complexities, factor in other energy conservation measures such as building fabric improvements (draught proofing, roof insulation, pipework insulation), solar PV and the replacement of ventilation system fan motors etc., means the challenges in implementing these solutions without disrupting hospital services requires careful consideration, planning and collaboration.
Heating, cooling, hot water and electrical services can have a direct impact on patient care, so a considered solution is required to enable these services to remain uninterrupted at all times. This can be a challenge, especially when transitioning from legacy systems to renewable alternatives. Developing these projects requires a full understanding of the hospital’s current operations in order to design and establish a resilient solution. This not only includes the physical equipment, but the phasing of the programme to prevent downtime and minimise risk. This could include the provision of additional pumps, so that if one fails the other continues to deliver heat, or planning the change over from legacy steam services to new LTHW in the summer months where the dependence on heating is reduced.
While it may seem obvious that heating, hot water and electrical services cannot be interrupted, there are many other factors that also need to be addressed when we design and implement our energy solutions, and early engagement with the correct people is essential for success. Factors such as noise, access, traffic management are all considerations that need to be managed, with the mitigating factors being different depending on the environment, department or services being affected.
Understanding the hospital environment
When developing our energy projects, it is important for us to collect as much information as we can. This isn’t only limited to the technical aspects on how the Trust’s current heating and energy infrastructure is configured and controlled, but the wider operational nuances of a live hospital environment. These can range from clinical services, staff training, parking arrangements and even kitchen operations.
A recent example of this was the replacement of catering equipment within a main kitchen, providing hot and cold meals to patients, staff and visitors alike. It was found that some legacy equipment (dishwashers, pressure cookers etc.), still had a reliance on the steam services we were looking to remove as part of our decarbonisation project. Engagement with the catering department enabled us to replace the equipment with suitable electrical alternatives and arranged the works in these areas so that their meal preparations and service periods were uninterrupted.
Collaboration and communication
Our early engagement provides us with the opportunity to build in mitigation measures as part of our solutions, so that site-wide services can continue to be provided with as little disruption as possible, enabling the Trusts that we work with to continue to deliver both clinical and non-clinical services in the most efficient and effective way possible, with minimal impact to patient care.
In the early days of our project programme, we have found it useful to undertake a ‘Prestart Workshop’ with key stakeholders, department leads and the Trust’s technical teams. By collaborating with relevant groups, we have found that we can obtain a good ‘buy-in’ from those in key positions, so they know the reasons we are there and what we, as collective, are trying to achieve. As the project moves into the construction phases it is important that communication in maintained and this is achieved in a number of ways, such as monthly client liaison meetings, and weekly look-ahead reports to highlight upcoming tasks, areas of work and any risks.
In addition, our construction teams continue to maintain relationships throughout the project term, meeting regularly with heads of department to establish the activities the Trust is undertaking so we can implement our works without impacting operations.
An example of this would be the development of our ‘Traffic Plan’. We understand that space within many hospital estates is at a premium, and additional personnel on site can impact on staff and patient parking, general access and potentially affect ‘blue light routes’. We work with our Trusts to reduce vehicle traffic as much as possible and recently supported one Trust in promoting their Park and Ride scheme, encouraging off-site parking and vehicle sharing in order to keep site traffic to a minimum. Our site teams also endeavour to arrange equipment and materials deliveries around the requirements of the Trust and the departments it will affect, while also maintaining our programme.
There are countless examples of considerations we look to implement to limit the disruption to patient care and hospital services, but with careful planning, collaboration, communication and the right technical expertise there are no challenges that we cannot overcome.
