ESTATE DECARBONISATION
Above: An EC fan wall retrofit in the Pathology AHU. Right: New controllers installed as part of BMS upgrade works.
units with 51 EC AHU fan assemblies with integrated inverter drives and Modbus control units.
n A BMS upgrade (173 obsolete controllers replaced) and strategy optimisation.
n Pipework insulation. n Draughtproofing.
Jeenash Mistry
With over 20 years’ experience in the NHS estates environment, OUH head of Operational Estates & Facilities, Jeenash Mistry, has extensive expertise working with both commercial estates providers and NHS Trusts. He is responsible for OUH’s retained Estates and Facilities services, co-ordinating activities across all four hospitals and all the other satellite sites that make up OUH – one of the UK’s largest NHS teaching hospital Trusts. He has a long history of delivering decarbonisation projects, including several Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) projects, and in the summer of 2022, led the OUH’s bid for funding in Phase 3B of PSDS grants. The bid was successful, and he has since led the implementation of the works.
What the project will deliver The installation of heat pump systems will deliver 4,000 tonnes (approx.) per annum of carbon savings towards Net Zero targets, alongside the following benefits: n Self-power generation from solar PV panels for greener energy.
n Implementation of Energy Conservation Measures with immediate cost and carbon savings.
n Reduced backlog maintenance and future lifecycle upgrade costs.
n Replacement of steam and HTHW networks, combined with secondary side modifications provides low / zero carbon ready heating infrastructure; without these changes delivering Net Zero targets would be impossible.
n Increased resilience towards fluctuations in price and availability of different energy sources and grid capacity.
The design should save over 25,000 GWh of fossil fuel, and 4,000 tonnes (approx.) of carbon per year, which will reduce the Trust’s exposure to any future carbon taxes, and there should also be financial savings. We will only know these figures once we have a full year’s data. Importantly, however, patients, staff, and visitors, are already feeling the comfort of improved control of the heating temperature and hot water. Wendy Cheeseman, head of Sustainability and Carbon Management at OUH, said: “If you look at the Greener NHS’s four-step approach, our decarbonising project has delivered on all four objectives, and gives us the ability for further improvements in the future.”
Future intentions Looking ahead, the Trust sees this project as the starting point for future carbon reduction works. On both sites, the ongoing maintenance of the new LTHW systems will be easier and quicker to manage, as the spare parts will be ‘off the shelf’, and this will significantly reduce waiting times should something need replacing. Wendy Cheeseman continued: “This scheme is not the end-point. It is the beginning. Yes, it has been disruptive
26 Health Estate Journal April 2025
and expensive, but it lays the foundations for all the future work we must do to reduce our carbon emissions exponentially year on year.” Chris Yeo added: “This project enables the future
integration of further low carbon heating systems, and is a significant step in delivering OUH’s Net Zero carbon targets. To deliver full heat decarbonisation, a significant amount of future funding and infrastructure upgrades is still required.
“Due to the lack of as-installed design information available for older hospital sites, it is very important to carry out a thorough review of existing systems to ensure that any new technical solutions can be integrated effectively. Carrying out detailed investigations of baseline operating conditions, and the creation of virtual Digital Twins, has helped ensure that the final solution can deliver the required design conditions of the hospital.”
Disruption management From a disruption management standpoint, we engaged with stakeholders very early on, and these changed as work progressed from ward to ward. Lyn Bennett, a former ICU matron, is our interface between the Estates team and clinicians, and she discussed the programme with clinical colleagues so that they could plan ahead, and we could all agree the mitigations needed to reduce our impact on patient care. We also have our own Estates Communications manager, who is in constant contact with all Trust staff on all the construction, facilities, maintenance, and infrastructure matters. Many other teams have also played a significant part
in this project’s success. For example, liaison between the Project team and IT teams to ensure that the new software would be compatible with other systems already in use in the hospitals was critical. We have done this work at speed without
compromising the governance, quality, and scope, of what we set out to achieve. We have now delivered the majority of the project to remove and replace the two hospitals’ hot water and heating systems without losing a day’s patient care, and will complete the outstanding work by October this year. The support we have had from Salix, all our Estates and clinical colleagues, Vital Energi, and the Trust’s Board, has been immeasurable. I think our brave decisions will pay off as we aim to
achieve NHS England’s carbon reduction targets, and we are looking forward to seeing exactly how much carbon and financial savings we achieve.
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