It is estimated by the US Department of Energy that buildings use approximately 50% of the total energy consumed in the United States today and produce a similar proportion of the greenhouse gases; hospitals as a building type use the second greatest amount of energy in the US. With growing attention on climate change and a special concern for our responsibility to achieve the 2030 Challenge, one must ask -- are hospitals the gas-guzzling sport utility vehicle's of our building culture today? Aside from being one of the largest energy consumers, we know that hospitals can be some of the least healthy places to work and heal because of the chronic stress in the environment. Drawing from the precedents of the last decade in Northern European construction of new hospital projects and recent projects in the Pacific Northwest, this panel will describe the opportunities in today's hospital projects to reduce energy demands, achieve the 2030 Challenge, increase healthcare systems' net operating income, and create a better interior environmental quality for both patients and staff.

The Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance through their Betterbricks program and the University of Washington are working with design teams and healthcare system partners in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) towards an integrated project delivery and operations approach that both increases the quality of the work and healing environment and significantly reduces energy use. This panel will present and discuss our approach to realizing strategic hospital partnerships for highly performing hospital designs and operations. These designs attempt to translate Northern European high-performance hospital realities into North American design alternatives that use significantly less energy than current hospitals in the PNW, and provide improved health for staff and healing for patients.

Funded by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, this panel of consultants has worked with PNW hospital design teams and owner organizations to realize high performance hospital projects integrating healthcare business practices, building design, interior environmental quality and energy efficiency concerns. High Performance Hospital (project) Partnerships (HP)2 are integrated design projects that involve the entire design team and ownership group from the onset of a project through its ongoing post-project operations. These (HP)2 have the opportunity to create project goals and implement designs that can significantly impact a hospital organization's bottomline for the duration of the building's life span.

With a significant commitment from the entire ownership, operating, design and construction team, substantial energy savings and indoor environmental quality achievements can be accomplished through an integrated planning, design, construction and operations process model (iD) developed by the BetterBricks team. The strategic actions of this process model produce better working environments for staff, better healing environments for patients and large energy savings. These operational results translate into savings equivalent to $20-$50 gross income per dollar saved. Simply put in just energy savings, a typical new energy-code-compliant 200 bed hospital in the PNW with a $2,500,000 energy budget and 40% realized energy savings from this iD process will see an increase of approximately $1,000,000 in net operating income (NOI), thus will realize a similar affect to adding $20,000,000 in gross services income in a 5% NOI environment, and $50,000,000 in a 2% NOI healthcare system!

The panel will present an outline of iD process, messages for the owner-focused strategic energy management planning process, the principal design, engineering and construction team focused strategies for performance improvement and the primary facility engineering strategies and goals for operation, illustrated by actual project case studies.