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Students
from Salt Lake Community College’s (SLCC) building and construction program
volunteered their time and expertise to help Habitat for Humanity build a home
loaded with sustainable green features in Park City. The resulting LEED
Platinum certification is the highest-level certification for energy efficiency
and environmental design that single-family homes can receive.
Habitat
for Humanity creates safe, healthy, decent, energy efficient and affordable
housing to low-income families around the world. Salt Lake Community College’s
building and construction program builds one or two homes each year as part of
its curriculum. This particular project was unique for a Habitat for Humanity
project and the college because the students’ participation in the project was
written directly into the college’s curriculum.
Three
SLCC faculty members were involved working with students participating in the
Habitat for Humanity project both in teaching and building. Three classes that
had about 20 students each were involved with the project. College
administrators plan on continuing to work with Habitat for Humanity on projects
in the future.
America’s hospitals and health systems are focusing more on renovation or expansion than new construction, according to a new survey conducted by Health Facilities Management magazine and the American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE). In fact, renovation or expansion accounted for 73 percent of construction projects at hospitals responding to the survey. The findings show that hospitals have been working to update or replace their infrastructure to better serve patients and help transition to greater use of information technology (IT). In addition, hospitals are focusing on being environmental stewards through greater use of “green” construction.
Overall, slightly more than one in four respondents (26.1 percent) reported that their organizations have building projects currently under construction. About 15 percent of this total involved new construction, 11.6 percent involved replacement facilities and the remainder covered expansion and renovation. In this latter category, many of the additions or modernization projects were for emergency departments, imaging, surgery areas or cancer centers.
“There’s a lot of ambiguity out there,” says George A. “Skip” Smith, CHFM, SASHE, 2011 ASHE president and interim vice president of supply chain/clinical engineering at Catholic Health Initiatives in Hilliard, Ohio. “As we look towards the future, everybody’s trying to figure it out, but nobody knows how it will all play out.”
While the construction increases aren’t dramatic, experts say there’s a clear shift in priorities that characterized previous construction trends to more emphasis on IT and other infrastructure improvements. More than one out of four hospitals were building service systems to accommodate the needs of electronic health records. A third of the 598 responding hospitals reported that they were replacing or upgrading their air handlers or ventilation systems, and one in five was upgrading a data center or planning to.
Survey data confirmed this trend and illustrated the continuing move by hospitals to add features that satisfy patients and families, while providing high quality care. Wireless technologies, in particular, are getting attention. Individual room temperature controls and educational systems each are being incorporated into about a third or more of new rooms.
Elsewhere, hospitals and health systems are focusing on making their building projects more environmentally friendly. More than two out of three respondents said they are specifying so-called “green” materials in most or all of their construction projects. About 60 percent of respondents also said their organization evaluates the cost/benefit of green construction methods for building projects.
The gradual improvement in the hospital construction market comes after a steep downturn that accompanied the nation’s deep recession in 2009, which was only a year removed from health care’s high-water mark in construction in 2008. Hospitals able to pursue construction and renovation projects are cautious in light of a changing economic and health care landscape.
A complete report on the survey findings, including data on financing methods for construction, building types, quality and safety features, can be found in the February issue of Health Facilities Management (www.hfmmagazine.com).
Indiana Cut Stone has been awarded the rights to distribute and market the Vanderbilt Classic line from Indiana Limestone Co. Vanderbilt Classic is a solid, genuine natural Indiana limestone (stone masonry unit) sawn building veneer. The strong, clean look of genuine Indiana limestone masonry units is ideal for both residential and commercial structures.
Vanderbilt Classics, available in the market for a number of years, now is being made available through and promoted by fabricators and distributors. Indiana Cut Stone, a longtime customer of Indiana Limestone Co., is pleased to include Vanderbilt in their product offering.
Vanderbilt Classic building veneer will continue to be available through the Indiana Limestone Co., and the product and trademarks remain their property. Moving forward, Indiana Cut Stone will be distributing and marketing Vanderbilt Classic to their network of masonry customers, so that the material is readily available for both new construction and restoration projects worldwide.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has released preliminary research findings that will help set a new standard in life-cycle assessment (LCA) modeling. The studies, which are part of an ongoing research initiative at the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, will quantify the cradle-to-grave environmental costs of paving and building materials, and will ultimately result in the most comprehensive LCA model produced to-date.
According to MIT professor and research team leader John Ochsendorf, the expanded life-cycle window – 50 years for paving materials and 75 years for building materials – combined with the level of detailed analysis conducted on the use phase of structures and pavements will distinguish MIT’s latest research. Initial reports have shown the importance of including the use phase, with MIT researchers finding that more than 90 percent of residential building life-cycle carbon emissions and up to 85 percent of highway pavement emissions occur during this period.
MIT’s ongoing work on measuring the life-cycle carbon emissions of these materials is scheduled to be completed by August 2011. The environmental findings will then be supplemented by economic analyses in 2011 to provide the most accurate assessment of the economic and environmental impacts for buildings and pavements yet produced.
