A combination of tighter budgets, increasing volumes of environmental legislation, and greater financial accountability, mean healthcare estate managers UK-wide are under growing pressure to save energy and money.
Indeed, the Department of Health’s targets of a 10 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2015, and an 80 per cent reduction by 2050, will be an enormous challenge – one that such skilled personnel are at the forefront of addressing.
So says Trend Control Systems, although it acknowledges that such demands ‘must be very carefully balanced against the need for patient and visitor comfort and, of course, the provision and continuity of building services’.
At Healthcare Estates 2013,the company’s ‘clear message’ to estates and facilities managers was ‘that by simply making a Trend building energy management system (BEMS) work harder, they can rest assured that their healthcare estate will deliver optimal work and care environments, and return significant energy and carbon reductions’.
According to Casey Wells, the company’s marketing manager, “Healthcare Estates 2013 was another great event for us’. She added: “It provides a welcome opportunity to meet end-users and healthcare professionals to discuss the requirements and challenges facing this marketplace”.
Trend says that up to 84 per cent of a healthcare estate’s energy consumption can be controlled by using a BEMS – ‘technology that has been recognised by The NHS Sustainable Development Unit (SDU) as a way to achieve an energy-efficient and low carbon healthcare service’. It is also now possible to control, monitor, and manage, energy consumption in real time, which the company says can ‘lead to instant and substantial savings’.
In Manchester, Trend demonstrated a number of its energy-saving solutions, including Trend Energy Manager – a ‘powerful’ energy monitoring and targeting package that can be installed on the healthcare estate’s own server. Using meter readings and other variables logged by the BEMS, it provides automatic reporting, and allows rapid diagnosis of energy overuse.
In the Energy Theatre, meanwhile, Trend presented on ‘How the NHS can better exploit an energy-saving asset’ – simply by making your Trend BEMS work harder’, and showed some best practice examples.
Trend says it has developed an offering that provides ‘a defined and measurable energy reduction strategy’.
