As the healthcare sector faces its urgent requirement to reduce carbon emissions, the importance of retrofitting existing hospital buildings to improve energy efficiency has never been more crucial. Here, Gordon Clyne, Joint Managing Director of Morris & Spottiswood explains the unique challenges presented by hospitals, and how a collaborative approach is most effective in improving their sustainability.
Effectively minimising a building’s total carbon footprint demands a holistic and strategic approach. By leveraging the expertise of professionals from diverse fields – including architects, engineers and environmental consultants – organisations can develop a nuanced, comprehensive strategy. This joined up thinking enables a more sophisticated understanding of the building’s environmental performance, uncovering innovative solutions to reduce carbon emissions across both material selection and energy management.
For example, a key aspect of improving the energy efficiency of a hospital lies within data-focused decision-making, made possible by real-world measurements. By collecting detailed consumption data, including half-hourly electricity and gas usage, BMS data (where installed), and applying this to calibrated energy modelling, healthcare facilities can move beyond assumptions to identify real inefficiencies. These insights allow for accurate assessment of decarbonisation potential, ensuring interventions are both practical and impactful.
An often-overlooked factor for decarbonisation in hospitals is the integration or modernisation of building controls. Many older healthcare facilities operate inefficiently due to limited or outdated controls systems that in some instances may be in control of building services systems that are in conflict with one another. Poorly performing buildings can lead to significant energy wastage, and a thorough assessment of control strategies, including seasonal commissioning, can create substantial efficiency gains from a relatively low investment. Identifying and addressing these operational inefficiencies is an instant opportunity for hospitals to reduce both carbon emissions and operating costs.
Securing funding for projects that address carbon reduction and improving energy efficiency also remains a key consideration. Often, the argument for sustainability initiatives has already been won, but budgets are perhaps not substantial enough to carry them out. Various funding mechanisms exist to support these efforts, including the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, The LowCarbon Skills Fund, and Recycling Funds – where energy savings are used to repay initial investments. Early contractor engagement can be a valuable way to align project objectives with available funding streams, and ensure application proposals are both suitable and feasible, ensuring that financial constraints do not become an impediment to progress, as well as uncovering opportunities for programme efficiencies and budget savings.
It’s also crucial to engage with a contractor that has a solid understanding of working within live environments, as this adds an additional layer of complexity to any retrofit hospital project. Everything from patient safety to infection prevention and control (IPC) must be considered, along with ensuring the continuity of critical services, which all require meticulous planning and stakeholder engagement. Before any work begins, a thorough assessment of the existing environment is essential as many older hospitals can have incomplete or outdated documentation, which makes intrusive surveys a necessary step to uncover hidden risks such as asbestos, lead-based materials, or ageing mechanical and electrical systems. Additionally, hospitals contain highly specialised infrastructure, from medical gas networks to vital power supplies, all of which require careful mapping and contingency planning to avoid disruptions to critical services.
Of course, IPC is absolutely paramount within healthcare settings and effectively managing this requires the creation of fully segregated work areas, dedicated access routes, and negative pressure environments to prevent contamination of patient areas. These measures are not only best practice but essential requirements for successfully executing retrofit projects in active healthcare facilities – all of which can be best optimised by taking a collaborative approach with the fitout supplier.
Engaging contractors early in project planning offers significant strategic advantages. By involving specialised teams from the outset, organisations can proactively identify potential challenges, maintain project timelines, and develop more precise cost estimates beyond generic pricing models.
Choosing a multi-disciplinary partner creates a unified approach with single-point accountability.
This approach is particularly powerful when combining sector-specific expertise with carbon reduction strategies, and targeted methods ensure that sustainability efforts are both practical and meaningful.
The goal is creating spaces that balance technical precision with human needs. By applying analytical thinking and pragmatic design, organisations can develop environments that are not just carbon-efficient, but fundamentally more functional and supportive of their intended purpose. The key is moving beyond superficial sustainability to create genuinely effective, adaptable spaces.
Ultimately, healthcare organisations must shift their mindset from viewing sustainability as a compliance exercise to recognising it as a long-term operational strategy. The alignment of carbon reduction targets with financial planning, operational efficiencies, and regulatory frameworks ensures that decarbonisation efforts are both viable and sustainable, and by leveraging real-world data, optimising building control systems and securing appropriate funding, hospitals can transition toward a more energy-efficient future without compromising the quality of care.
One of the most important takeaways is the coordination and collaboration with true sector experts. With our unique end to end service offering, including innovative carbon reduction strategies through our specialist company, crbn solutions, the Morris & Spottiswood Group are perfectly placed, providing turnkey solutions, shouldering all the design, analysis and installation work to help create more sustainable healthcare facilities.
For more information on the Morris & Spottiswood Group, please visit: www.morrisandspottiswoodgroup.co.uk
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