COVID-19 puts efficient and reliable running into focus

With input from her colleague and MD, Authorising Engineer (Ventilation), David Livingstone, Dr Louise Webb, Project director at DRLC – a provider of authorising and regulatory compliance consultancy services for the healthcare estates and healthcare engineering sector, considers the key steps for keeping airhandling and other vital ventilation plant in healthcare facilities running both reliably, and – with the drive towards Net Zero – as efficiently and sustainably as possible.

The COVID-19 pandemic has focussed attention on how buildings, and particularly those within the healthcare estate, are ventilated. Ventilation, both natural and mechanical, uses energy, especially in UK winter months, and of course NHS Trusts are simultaneously under increasing pressure to reduce their energy consumption and carton emissions in the drive towards Net Zero Carbon. Nick Evans, Energy Environment Sustainability manager for Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LPFT) and Lincolnshire Community Health Service NHS Trust (LCHS), says of the issues he faces in moving a mental healthcare Trust and supporting a community healthcare Trust in Lincolnshire towards Net Zero Carbon: “Our building stock at LPFT and LCHS ranges from Victorian buildings to premises currently under construction, with the majority of the buildings constructed from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s. With the ever-increasing need to move away from fossil fuel heating systems, and to utilise renewable, more sustainable technology, there will be an increased demand on the amount of electricity consumed. We therefore need to explore every opportunity to increase the energy efficiency of our buildings, and reduce our energy consumption. 

AHUs’ greater energy efficiency