By HFT Staff

Arnprior Regional Health (ARH) District & Memorial Hospital leaders needed to address deferred maintenance issues and modernize building controls and facility infrastructure systems at their hospital. They wanted to improve the hospital facility’s indoor environmental quality (IEQ) to support patient care and reduce long-term operating costs. 

Issues needing attention included inconsistent lighting and significant maintenance time required to keep aging HVAC systems operational. Outdated building controls made maintaining building comfort a challenge, impacting patients and visitors. Leaders also wanted to cut utility costs, reduce water consumption and improve infrastructure-monitoring capabilities to enable more effective decision-making regarding building performance. 

After recently completing a successful boiler plant upgrade with Trane, ARH leaders sought the company’s expertise and collaborative approach for this next phase of project work. The phase one work utilized an energy savings performance contract, which enabled ARH to fund the upgrades using future energy savings. Pleased with those results, ARH collaborated with Trane to use the same structure to provide funding for this phase two project, which allowed existing ARH capital funds to be preserved for needed medical equipment. 

Trane started by completing a detailed facility assessment to identify and prioritize upgrades needed, incorporating the remaining life of equipment. Trane also helped ARH build stakeholder engagement, fostering a supportive collaborative atmosphere for the project in multiple ways. For example, Trane regularly obtained input from departmental leaders while also engaging a cross-departmental and cross-functional ARH team in selecting energy conservation measures for the facility. 

A regional leader in selected acute, long-term care and other health needs, Arnprior Regional Health is located about 65 kilometers west of Ottawa. With a staff of 300 and a growing number of medical staff all supported by almost 200 volunteers, the progressive 44-bed hospital, which also includes a nursing home, provides care to over 30,000 residents of West Ottawa, McNab/Braeside, Arnprior and Mississippi Mills. 

Based on the facility assessment findings, the project team installed a new building automation system (BAS) to replace the existing outdated, inadequate BAS. The new BAS provides better control strategies and more advanced data and analytics, informing better decision-making to drive optimized building performance. 

The project team updated air handling units throughout the facility, increasing system reliability and energy efficiency while improving comfort for building occupants. The team converted spaces throughout the facility to uniformly colored LED lighting, transforming areas such as hallways, nurses’ stations, stairways and common areas. Trane also helped improve the building envelope with weather stripping and caulking of exterior building elements. New low-flow toilets and sinks were added throughout the facility to conserve water. 

As part of a longer-term solution to manage facilities performance, ARH began to utilize Trane Intelligent Services, where, through a consultative relationship, Trane energy engineers monitor and analyze building data gathered by the BAS. The energy consultants then advise ARH leaders when potential troubleshooting is needed and make targeted recommendations to adjust systems for better performance.  

After phase two of the project was completed, Trane and ARH hosted a stakeholder engagement event on Earth Day to educate staff about the building improvements. The event highlighted how the upgrades improved the space for building occupants, reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and cut energy and operational costs. 

Upgrades were completed with minimal interruption to ARH operations and staff responded positively to the upgrades. After lighting was upgraded, for example, nursing staff noted that the upgraded light levels helped patients and staff note any wet areas on patients’ bathroom floors, avoiding potential slips and falls. 

This completed phase two project improved ARH’s ability to monitor, control and optimize the indoor environment, driving more effective decision-making regarding daily operations. Upgraded systems reduced facilities staff maintenance hours so they could focus on other building management work. 

Arnprior Regional Health is now conserving more than 6,141 cubic meters per 1.62 million gallons of water a year. The improvements reduced annual utility costs by $95,375 Canadian dollars, reducing electricity use by 25 percent and gas use by 23 percent. These reductions offset the equivalent of eliminating 19 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year3. 

In recognition of ARH’s commitment to advancing healthcare engineering through its energy-saving, staff-engaging upgrade process, the Canadian Healthcare Engineering Society awarded ARH with the Wayne McLellan Award of Excellence in 2021.