CHANGE AGENTS BARTS HEALTH NHS TRUST
WASTE UNDER THE KNIFE
Barts Health NHS Trust reduced energy bills by £105,000 in two hospitals by persuading workers to close doors and turn off lights. Fiona Daly is quizzed on how a focus on patient care changed behaviour and cut energy use
An energy-saving project being trialled at Barts Health NHS
Trust hospitals saved the NHS’s largest trust £105,000 last year. The ‘Turn off, lights out, close doors’ (TLC) scheme took place at Barts and The Royal London and the Trust says the initiative could save up to £800,000 in the next two years across its six hospitals. The TLC scheme uses the ‘nudge’ philosophy, encouraging groups to work together and remind each other of the benefi ts of saving energy for patients use.
What inspired the project? The inspiration was two-fold. We wanted to use behavioural change to drive energy effi ciency and we wanted to ensure that the project had longevity within the organisation. We had tried a few things before, like poster campaigns that were successful for the period they ran, but they never lasted the distance. We were keen to focus on how
effi ciency would improve patient experience, since caring is obviously our core business. We communicated how closing doors made wards less noisy and turning off lights gave patients a better night’s sleep. We realised that with all the people
we had to engage – 15,000 staff and about 3,000 contractors – we really needed to get a collaborative approach working.
What were the challenges to changing behaviour? On a day-to-day basis getting health professionals to be energy effi cient is very diffi cult because they are focused on patient care. The challenge was to
58 CIBSE Journal August 2013
We were keen to focus on how effi ciency would improve patient
experience, since caring is obviously our core business
make it relevant and integrate it into regular work. They often see other things – such as energy effi ciency – as important if you speak to them on a one-to-one basis; they absolutely get it and they want to help. It is important to reward people
who have done well with gifts, such as tins of biscuits at Christmas.
Who drove energy effi ciency on the wards? We had about 140 main sustainability champions who were on the ground – in wards – really trying to drive effi ciency. We taught them the principles of TLC and gave them training through UNEP (United Nations Events Programme) certifi cation. They also worked with our facilities providers, which are external companies, to gain a greater awareness of why things happen. For example, people often don’t know exactly what a building management system is and how it operates, so working with the facilities providers really helped to expand knowledge.
How was the message delivered? Through a variety of methods from face-to-face communication to screensavers, pens and an infl atable energy-saving character called Mr Switch (pictured above).
Who is funding the initiative? We entered into a public-private- NGO partnership to achieve all of these objectives. Our funding is split between several sources: half is coming from Barts Trust itself, a quarter from Skanska and a quarter
from General Electric. Payback for the fi rst 12 months was less than a year.
What are the long-term aims? For the fi rst year, the focus was on our two largest sites, but now we have funding to introduce the scheme to our other hospitals. We hope to expand this to other NHS Trusts and we will share what we have learned. We want to create a blueprint. An independent clinical assessment team carried out patient evaluation surveys to determine what behavioural changes initiatives were actually working. There is not much evidence for success through behavioural change.
How do you repeat the success of the last year? The fi rst year was focused on getting people on board. We are recruiting more sustainability champions, who will be doing more micro-projects to drive effi ciency in specifi c wards. As well as that, we are looking to
push this out to the community. We want people to be more aware of what the carbon footprint is and why it is important to reduce it.
What’s the next step? We will be rolling out the programme to the remainder of our sites and exploring how to integrate technology into the project. Along with our partners, energy specialists GE, Skanska and Global Action Plan we will be exploring how we can help the NHS achieve its £35m saving potential.
● FIONA DALY is the environmental manager at Barts Health NHS Trust
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