COMMUNICATIONS

Media Release - 09/03/2006

CDHB Recognised in Energy Management Awards

A Christchurch Hospital energy management project has won the Canterbury District Health Board a highly commended award at the Energy Efficiency Conservation Authority (EECA) “Energywise” Awards 2006.

The awards are a showcase for best practice among a range of industries in the energy management field.

The board’s Electrical and Energy Engineer, Brendon Groufsky, was highly commended in the Energy Manager Section, for energy saving work at Christchurch Hospital which was completed by a team from the CDHB’s Maintenance and Engineering.

“It was a real team effort by a number of hard working individuals within the M and E team at Christchurch Hospital who got the initiatives implemented. Dave Watson our Services Engineer, and Graeme Coulsen our Mechanical and Electrical Services supervisor have both played a large part in making sure our energy spend is under control,” said Alan Bavis, Facilities and Engineering Manager.

“In particular Brendon, Dave and Graeme have played a large part in making sure our energy spend is under control by carrying out upgrades to controls, looking after the boilers and steam traps and initiatives such as lighting control and day to day housekeeping.

“Although we did not win the outright award, we did receive one of two highly commended awards in the Energy Manager section for work done at the Christchurch Hospital site on energy management,” said Mr Bavis.

“As part of this entry we nominated Brendon to receive the award. However the work that has gone into this has been a real team effort. Likewise there are a large number of staff members at the Christchurch Hospital site who are very motivated to save energy and any savings initiative relies to some extent on the staff behaviour in the field.”

The same Maintenance and Engineering project was first equal in the CDHB’s own Quality and Innovation Awards in 2004, and won a Highly Commended in its category at the New Zealand Health Innovation Awards 2005.

Energy audits are currently being carried out by the team at all of the metropolitan hospital sites in Christchurch, in order that the energy saving success can be repeated.

“Among our aims is to make the environmental footprint of the CDHB as small as possible. This means controlling our emissions and waste streams.

“We are also very interested in life cycle costing models and not just up front cheapest capital cost.”

Ends.

Jocelyn Johnstone
Acting Communications Manager
027-284-3286