During their recent visit, Rural Northwest Health’s overall environmental sustainability impressed government auditors so much that some of the systems and practices will be used as recommendations for other health services seeking to lower their energy consumption.
Visiting as part of a statewide check of health service environmental assets, the auditors spent 4 days visiting our sites, assessing and noting all energy-consuming assets including lights, fridges, and air conditioning.
Maintenance Services Manager Heath McGrath said the auditors were working on a classification scale, which RNH easily exceeded with our advanced Building Management Systems (BMS).
“We are already above the curve with regard to energy consumption,” he said.
“Currently already running full LED lighting, we are 2/3 of the way through setting up time sensors for heat lights in all bathrooms,
“The auditors were very impressed to see what RNH had in place, and will use their findings as a benchmark for other facilities,
Heath said RNH is already lucky to be running significant solar across the three campuses, and that the team are now looking at solar-evacuated tubing.
“It’s good to know that RNH is already above the other services with the systems we have in place,” he said.
“We are continually improving, and will continue our work to further tidy up the BMS and to monitor our solar input”.