Project
Full HVAC, Essential Services and refrigeration planned maintenance, reactive maintenance and capital works across a 365/24/7 service
Key Challenges
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An active hospital with over 35k Emergency admissions and over 22k hospital admissions per year
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Covid onslaught enabled rapid engagement and development of innovative solutions to ensure safe operating theatres and Covid-based wards, where NATA certified
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Poorly commissioned assets resulting in inefficient systems and higher operating costs
Outcomes
Covid developed initiatives accredited by NATA
Asset based initiatives resulting in energy gains for all site
Conditional based assessments resulting in efficiency gains
The Client
Orange is a major regional centre, and supports the largest hospital within Western NSW LHD, with the new 200 bed Level 5 general hospital opened in March 2011. The Orange Health Service campus, incorporating the general hospital and mental health services, is now the largest non-metropolitan health facility in the Southern hemisphere. Orange Health Service is the regional trauma centre for the mid-west. The emergency department has accreditation as a training facility with the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine for registrar training, as well as EMET.
Orange Health Service provides primary care to a population of approximately 45,000 with specialist support of a further 200,000, including the communities of Cowra, Parkes, Forbes, Grenfell, Condobolin, and other smaller towns. This support is provided both by referral for inpatient care at Orange, and by the provision of outreach clinics and other community-based services.
What we achieved with our Customer
AE Smith, operating under Downer at the time, worked with the Orange District Hospital through a PPP arrangement which covers all three hospitals within the precinct, being Orange Base, Bloomfield Mental Health, and Bathurst Base Hospital. Collectively this covers over 40 buildings and services over 250,000 square kilometres. Our team performs full HVAC and mechanical maintenance and reactive services across all key and critical assets.
Critical assets such as operating theatres, emergency wards, isolation rooms and managerial control over boilers, Chillers, Filtration, CRAC units in data rooms and the UPS systems on site.
Upon successfully winning the contract and performing a condition based assessment throughout the site(s) and utilising key data sources through the BMS system, our team found anomalies within the Chillers. Further review found the Condenser Coils in Bathurst were piped incorrectly resulting in it using only a 3rd of its actual capacity. Correcting enabled further energy savings to the Hospital and improved overall performance of the system.
Upon the arrival of COVID 19, our team worked directly with key stakeholders to rapidly alter critical areas to assist the hospitals to manage the crisis. We reverted 6 full operating theatres to a negative pressure scenario, to combat and contain any infectious patients. Our team’s initiative was supported with a proactive alarm based mechanism, to ensure seamless monitoring and effective awareness of the performance of the theatres. This became NATA certified.
Again working with our customer through the BMS system we set up an entire designated ward to run under a negative flow and exhaust 100% of return air to ensure the hospital was able to cater to the overload of patients affected by Covid.
Additional responsibilities for end of life asset upgrades through the team provided innovative solutions and assets to their upgrade program, which offered improved efficiency whilst also enabling an energy reduction outcome.
