Carbon reduction and greater resilience in the pipeline

Claire Hennessy, head of Operational Estates and Facilities Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (HEJ – May 2016), describes a major infrastructure project currently ongoing at Oxford’s John Radcliffe and Churchill Hospitals to upgrade and modernise heating and energy systems – one of the most challenging aspects of which has been the installation of a 1.4 km district heating system (Energy Link) between the two sites, involving laying of a variety of pipework and cabling under local roads. Without the heating and energy project, she explains, not only would the Trust have struggled to get through another winter, but it could also not have contemplated the redevelopment of the Churchill site, or met the expected needs of the John Radcliffe Hospital now and into the future.

There have been a number of major building projects recently at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to improve clinical and patient care facilities, and 2015 saw the start of a major infrastructure project to renew the heating and energy provision at the Trust’s John Radcliffe Hospital (JRH) and Churchill Hospital (CH). In fact, this work is the largest NHS infrastructure project currently running in England, with a budget of £14.8 million.

The original boilers at the JRH were commissioned in December 1973, and in 1963 at the Churchill. The generators at the Churchill (which were operational until a couple of years ago) were installed by the American ‘GI’s, who later bequeathed the Churchill Hospital with its contents to Oxford Council in 1945. So, not only were these boilers and generators designed for a much smaller scale sites, but they were also operating many years beyond what you would normally expect of such equipment.