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units. Michael Blades added: “We’re also installing cavity wall insulation into most of the walls, which should make a big difference to energy conservation and patient comfort, because some parts of the hospital are certainly draughty.” Owen Cusack explained that the existing
Figure 1: Breathe Energy says the decarbonisation project at North Tyneside General Hospital will enable the Trust ‘to move some way towards the NHS Net Zero target by 2040’. The graph shows that Scope 1 and 2 CO2
emissions will fall to 31% of the 2021 baseline by 2030, and 16% by 2040, respectively.
Healthcare FM’s MD, Damon Kent and I sat down and marked the submissions, and all agreed there was a place on the framework for all six bidders. We subsequently appointed Breathe Energy to undertake the heat decarbonisation project for us. It was consistently the best organisation over the whole project. Two-thirds of the way through the tender process,” he continued, “the Trust team introduced the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme into the tender framework process, and confirmed we would apply for funding to Salix Finance, for a grant from BEIS (the Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy).” The Trust subsequently received a grant of ‘around £19.5 m’, covering most of the cost of the work proposed. The winning tender submission from
Breathe, Michael Blades explained, was based around installing two air source
heat pumps and a single water source heat pump to allow the transition from low temperature to higher temperature that aligns with the normal LTHW. He said: “The project includes de-
steaming the North Tyneside General Hospital – removing the three existing steam boilers (two of which are 45 years’ old, and the other 21 years’ old) and all the steam pipework. The steam boilers are currently being removed, and a low temperature hot water system is being installed, which has to be in situ before the steam system can be removed.”
Photovoltaics and glazing replacement In parallel, the project team has installed some 1 MW of solar photovoltaics on the hospital’s roof, and is replacing all the single-glazed windows in Phase One of the hospital with some 550 double-glazed
heating at the North Tyneside General Hospital had been via a combination of radiators and mechanical ventilation. He said: “Replacing the existing steam heating system is very much work in progress. We will be installing literally miles of new LTHW pipework, and replacing every steam calorifier with a plate heat exchanger. We also need to fit LTHW heating coils at every ventilation plant, to replace steam coils with LTHW coils, and replace every fan. We have already replaced about 30 of the 65 belt and pulley forward curve fans we have with plug and EC fans. Each fan replaced will give us at least a 10-20 per cent energy saving, plus 10-15 per cent extra capacity.”
Co-ordinating isolations and shutdowns Owen Cusack explained that all the fan replacement work was being co-ordinated by Breathe, with a single contractor, AHS, undertaking it. He said: “We are also fitting new inverters. We began the project last October. All the work has had to be undertaken at night, when theatres are not operating at full capacity. We’ve had to replace every theatre supply and extract fan. Logistically it’s a huge coordination exercise, with considerable equipment testing to do. Each fan has had to be tested to ensure we are still getting the same air volume, so we don’t affect air- change rates.” So far, the work has not overly disrupted care, or required ward ‘decants’. I asked about the design and location of the air and water source heat pumps, and any ‘challenges’ entailed in their installation.
Noise attenuation Michael Blades said: “I don’t think they MP opened ‘state-of-the-art’ sterilisation facility
The new £8 m Northumbria Sterile Processing Centre, located in the grounds of the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital in Cramlington, was opened by Blyth Valley MP, Ian Levy, on 19 November 2021, and replaced two Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust sterilisation departments at Wansbeck and North Tyneside General Hospitals, both built over 30 years ago. The equipment within it can disinfect and sterilise half a million items of medical equipment annually, 200,000 more
54 Health Estate Journal June 2022
than could be processed previously. Each takes up to four and a half hours to go through the process.
The two-storey ‘bespoke and carbon-neutral’ facility is just one of Northumbria Healthcare’s projects to align with the Trust’s recently launched ‘Community Promise’ – based on ‘six key pillars which relate to wider factors that fuel health inequality’ – poverty, employment, education, economy, environment, and wellbeing. Ninety per cent of the Centre was constructed off site by specialist in the field, Merit, which has a production facility in Cramlington. The facility is powered by green electricity.
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Courtesy of Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
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