Water consumption cut and money saved

As he explains, in an article which first appeared in Canadian Healthcare Facilities magazine, many of the steps were both straightforward to implement, and had an extremely short payback period.

Guelph General Hospital (GGH) is a comprehensive acute care facility servicing a population of 180,000 people throughout Guelph and Wellington County in Southwestern Ontario. The hospital provides 165 beds, and has a total floor area of 340,000 ft2, plus a medical office building with a total area of 32,000 ft2. In 2006 GGH entered into an energy agreement with Johnson Controls. The energy performance contract had a payback of three years, with savings guaranteed at over $150,000 per year. Savings were generated through a reduction in electricity and gas. Later, in 2011, GGH retained Enviro-Stewards Inc. to complete a water conservation assessment funded under the City of Guelph’s water conservation programme. The scope of this water audit consisted of an assessment of historical data, staff interviews, and in-plant studies, to determine where water was being consumed in the daily operations of GGH. Results of the in-plant studies were used to generate a water balance for the facility, which is summarised in Table 1. Based on the in-plant studies, potential reduction opportunities were identified. Water consumption, when expressed in terms of water intensity (m3/m2/year), can be compared to industry benchmarks to gauge the performance of the hospital in this particular use of resource. Benchmarks sited for Ontario hospitals are based on a study completed for the Ontario Hospital Association in 2006.

 Identifying water consumption