Institutional News
CHU de Quebec-Université Laval rewarded with Wayne McLellan Award

CHU received the award from the Canadian Healthcare Engineering Society (CHES) at the 37th annual conference held on September 18 in Niagara Falls, Ont. This is the second such acknowledgement for CHU, which also won the “Integrated Management” award from Association québécoise pour la maîtrise de l’énergie (AQME) at the 27th Energia gala.

Collaborating with CHU was Ecosystem, an independent design-build firm offering construction and retrofit projects in the institutional, commercial, municipal, industrial and real estate sectors. For each of its projects, Ecosystem contractually guarantees the results will be delivered.

“In 2015, for three of the CHU’s sites, energy consumption fell 30% and its greenhouse gas emissions declined by 56%, or 12,914 tonnes,” said Pierre-André Tremblay, CHU’s technical services director. “These results are guaranteed and recur annually.”

The prize-winning project concerned three of the five CHU hospitals: CHUL, Hôpital de L’Enfant- Jésus and Hôpital du Saint-Sacrement. Similar work is almost complete at Hôpital Saint-François d’Assise.

The results were attained by completely re-engineering the HVAC and lighting systems. CHU chose to convert steam heating networks to hot water, and made improvements in heat recovery and equipment controlled by centralized systems, coupled with optimized operating sequences.

According to the partners, public investment was minimal because project costs are covered by subsidies and savings guaranteed by Ecosystem.