Case Study

Advanced Building Analytics Leads to Successful Operating Room Optimization

Fifteen years ago, a hospital in Macomb Michigan added a new surgery center wing to their expansive campus and needed building analytics. On the surface, the new addition began as a way to provide quality care with expert surgeries, but deep within the bowels of the hospital, the essential mechanical and control assets serving the new surgery center were suffering from performance issues and band-aid approaches from the very first day of occupancy.

Patient safety and comfort is essential to any high-performing healthcare facility. Since the very opening of the new addition, the surgery center had continual problems with the operating rooms (OR) maintaining proper pressure relationships, which in turn lead to constant issues with temperature and humidity requirements. The ORs were not able to maintain the proper positive pressure relationships required at the design airflow of 25 Air Changes per Hour (ACH), so the Facility Team was forced to increase in the ACH rate in all OR spaces in order to achieve the required positive pressure relationships.

Facility Managers shouldn’t have to run their systems to failure.

This increased Air Changes per Hour (ACH) had a significant cascading impact on the entire system. In order to properly condition the increased airflow required for the modified ACH, the air handling unit (AHU) serving the ORs had to work excessively hard, which included a tremendous increase in its need for more cooling capacity. This demand for more cooling capacity forced the two air-cooled chillers serving the addition to operate well beyond their design capacity, so they were never able to function properly.

For fifteen years they believed the two chillers were the issue within the system as they could never properly meet the cooling requirements of the modified system, so they continued down the path of running the chillers to failure, blowing compressors, replacing equipment, and never being able to truly solve their issues. Eventually, the chillers failed beyond repair and two rental chillers were brought in to keep the system operational. It wasn’t until the addition of building analytics that they were able to discover the root cause of their system troubles and finally put an end to all their headaches.

The demand for more cooling capacity forced the two air-cooled chillers serving the addition to operate well beyond their design capacity, so they were never able to function correctly.

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