Concord, NH
Concord Hospital, originally established in 1884 as the Concord Hospital Association was started to provide care for the community’s underserved. Thanks to the generosity of businessman George Pillsbury the first 50 bed general hospital was built through his gift of $60,000 and opened its doors in December of 1891. Through the years a number of medical facilities had been opened in the community, however in 1956 a decision was made that to better serve the community all of these services and organizations would be combined into one facility located at 250 Pleasant Street in Concord, the current location of Concord Hospital, an affiliate of the Capital Region Health Care organization.
Though the facilities have evolved through the years to accommodate more patients, providing; technologically advanced diagnostic equipment, centers of excellence in cancer, orthopedics, urology, cardiac and women’s health one thing has not changed — the charitable mission of the hospital which is to meet the health needs of individuals within the communities it serves.
Under the direction of President and CEO Michael Green, the Vice President of facilities, Domenic Ciavarro, works diligently to ensure that the hospital continues to provide the best care available at the most reasonable cost. Part of fulfilling this mission, requires Director of Facility Operations, Paul Cantrell, to continually reduce the operational costs of the campus and associated facilities.
The campus has seen a number of major renovations and additions over the last ten years; building additions, expansion of the emergency services areas, a new parking garage, a new full service cancer facility as well as hosting expansion of new and emerging technologies such as the daVinci™ surgical system and a new surgical training center.
Concord Hospital is challenged to provide these expansions and technologies at reasonable costs and has found a viable solution — Energy Efficiency. Though all of the new facilities are built under the principles of new construction established by LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), the existing buildings have required a deft hand to effectively renovate while still providing services and reduce costs. The most recent major renovation involved replacing all of the interior lighting in three major locations — the main Hospital building, the Memorial and the Pillsbury Medical Office Buildings. The project consisted of replacing older technology fluorescent lamps and fixtures (T-12 and early T-8 vintage) with super T-8 systems and a variety of compact fluorescent fixtures and lamps. One of the dramatic efficiency replacements was the revamping of room night lights from 60 watt incandescent lamps to LED lamps using less than 1/4 of a watt!
The project also included lighting retrofits to the exterior parking lots, garages, and walkways. Given all of the work completed, which was done for an investment just shy of $1,000,000 the hospital expects to garner savings of 1,098,552 KWH per year or 14,281,176 KWH over the life of the equipment. To reflect on the magnitude of savings in budgeting terms, the hospital will realize a savings of about a month’s worth of electricity every year!
According to Mr. Cantrell what really made the project fly was the incentive program available through Unitil, the local electric distribution company. Working with their Senior Business Development Executive, Gary Miller, Mr. Cantrell was able to achieve an incentive of $204,080.00 through a Large Commercial Energy Efficiency program.
Mr. Cantrell went on to say that the relationship developed over the years with Unitil certainly paid off through this project; “I was able to connect my vendors with Gary to work through the paperwork, inspections and approvals. Gary really helped to make this all a very simple process.
“Thanks to Unitil and the active work of our account representative we are able to continue to fulfill our charitable mission while reducing operating expenses.”
The work hasn’t stopped, Mr. Cantrell indicates that there are more projects on the boards – “We are currently reviewing the opportunity of replacing a variety of motors/drives and revamping our ventilation/air-conditioning systems throughout the main building. We expect this work to occur early in 2013 and we have been working with Unitil to maximize the available incentives based on the cutting edge equipment and technology we will be installing.”
