In 2013, Major Health Partners entrusted Envelop Group and CMTA Consulting Engineers with what was to become MHP Medical Center, a new, state-of-the art medical facility in Shelbyville, Indiana.
Four years later, the owner, along with Envelop’s Open Control Systems, EnvelopiQ, and Validated Custom Solutions divisions and CMTA, realized their goal of designing a state of the art medical facility; one that bucked conventional design and went above and beyond traditional facility energy efficiencies.
Envelop teams deployed system concepts across the hospital network, upgrading 8-10 buildings in all and creating a more efficient day-to-day operational strategy for the hospital’s facility department.
Each of Envelop’s divisions utilized their fundamental understanding of MHP’s needs to power their work for the owner, leveraging their unique capabilities in each area to execute to the highest standard.
Validated Custom Solutions / Open Control Systems
MHP’s design objectives for the new medical center included using conventional heating and cooling systems in unconventional ways, for significant energy-efficiency gains. To this end, the project team targeted an aggressive ENERGY STAR goal of 95 or higher
One of the key challenges in meeting the project’s energy saving goals was the new building connects to an existing 46,000 square foot cancer center. As the existing building was designed with a more conventional system and energy was not a significant consideration, the new hospital central plant had the challenge of back feeding the existing heating and cooling systems.
To help cost effectively optimize building operations for energy savings, the team chose the Alerton Ascent building management system. Ascent’s features and ease-of-use were the perfect fit for a sophisticated building owner operating a critical facility,” says Ed Ransom, vice president of operations for the Envelop Group’s Open Control Systems (OCS) division.
In Major Hospital’s two support buildings (approx. 300,000 sq. ft.) – a data center and administration center – OCS also upgraded controls that feed into the Alerton server.
MHP is also in the process of building a Cancer Center Addition with a Linear Accelerator to its older Benesse wing. OCS is adding the controls for this addition to the Alerton Server plus working with the owner to road map the upgrade of all of the Benesse wing’s legacy controls to the Alerton Server.
OCS also installed an analytics solution for the owner – BuildingLogiX – providing real time analysis for the facility and enabling a clear path to verifying and maintaining efficiencies.
And while the new hospital addition is still under warranty from the project, OCS provided the owner with a “premium” warranty, which is above and beyond the typical warranty scope. They receive free preventive maintenance / service contract for their control system through their two-year warranty period.
The service department does quarterly visits with the hospital and runs through a preventative maintenance list, checks on analytics data, and addresses and other items of concern for the owner.
“It will be one of the more efficient hospitals in Indiana,” says Douglas R. Hundley Jr., PE, principal with CMTA Consulting Engineers. Hundley predicts the facility will use 53% less energy than the national average for hospitals (125 kBtu/sf/ year vs. 266 kBtu/sf/year).
Communication Solutions
In addition to its HVAC needs, MHP required security technology investments that could grow with the hospital and provide centralized management across all properties.
MHP also required centralized security management across multiple locations; sought an end-to-end security solution with an intuitive user interface; needed to protect patients and facilities against potential vulnerabilities by quickly evaluating incidents and taking appropriate actions; and wished to create future-proof security management to grow with demand.
Jeff Williams, MHP’s Vice President of Facility Operations, was responsible for approving the selection and deployment of the hospital’s security solutions and knew the importance of choosing the right end-to-end video management and camera system.
“We (the hospital) had a prior situation where we had several, disparate systems installed and, quite frankly, the customer service suffered. When we needed help, we would have the different manufacturers pointing fingers at each other and nobody willing to take responsibility. This time around, we felt it was imperative to standardize on one solution and deal with one company.”
The Communication Solutions division was tasked to find a solution that could meet current challenges and deliver on just what the hospital needed into the future. The result was a complete turnkey strategy for four buildings, encompassing:
• Emergency Call Stations
• Medical Cabinet Access Control
• CCTV Cameras
• Card Access (general entry)
• Video Access (general entry)
• Integrated Panic / Facility Lockdown
• Pharmacy Security
• Parking Lot Lift Gates
The team implemented a Vicon solution, combining Valerus VMS software, NVRs (recording servers) with high storage capacity, and close to 200 indoor and outdoor IP cameras.
For camera placement, MHP required coverage of every entrance and exit of all buildings. The hospital also wanted cameras in many public and semi-public areas. Lobbies, waiting areas, certain corridors, the pharmacy, and all rooms with drug cabinets required cameras, as did outdoor walkways, the parking lots and surrounding grounds. All of these cameras can be monitored from MHP’s main security room.
In addition, smaller local monitoring stations are set up in the ICU, emergency room and pharmacy. Valerus’ administrator tools made it easy to set different permissions and access levels for operators based upon their responsibilities and need to view certain areas of the hospital.
Once all equipment was in place, OCS worked with MHP’s Project Coordinator, Abby Lauck, to set up profiles for each administrator and operator. Together, they configured the Valerus interface to display a customized set of menus and resources for each user to help them do their job most effectively.
According to Jeff Williams at MHP, “We could not have done this without Open Control Systems. They were able to keep pace with an ever-changing construction schedule and deliver exactly what we needed,” he says.
The hospital, which prides itself on delivering the most advanced healthcare services and facility technology, can now boast having a security solution that’s equally advanced.
Sound masking is also underway on one building and in development on another.
Ranked three times in the Top 100 “Most Wired Hospitals in America” with the most advanced computer systems, according to Hospitals and Health Networks Magazine, Major Health Partners relied on Envelop Group and CMTA to enable their state-of-the-art technology, which allows them to provide quality care.
Envelop Group president, Travis Ihnen applauds his divisions and their partners, stating,“Early involvement allowed us to affect design process decisions. And this elevated level of execution came from a true partnership with the designers and owner.”