Hospital News

Nemours Announces LEED Certification

Nemours recently announced that it has registered with the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for Nemours Children’s Hospital and pediatric health care campus. Not only will the hospital be highly patient and family-friendly, but the design team is currently working to make sure it’s extremely environmentally friendly as well by incorporating high performance green designs into the facility so that it can achieve this prestigious certification.Nemours continues to work on its campus design with a team that includes more than 150 internal and external health care business experts, clinicians, architects and individuals that are collaborating to provide critical insight into pediatric care delivery for the new health system. The campus will consist of a children’s hospital, clinic, emergency department, diagnostic and ambulatory programs, along with education and research centers spanning some 600,000 sq. ft. for a total project cost of approximately $400 million.

The LEED Green Building Rating System, as defined by USGBC, “encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria.” Sustainable design concepts will allow Nemours to reduce the long term operational costs associated with running a facility of this size, but more importantly, it will also help reduce certain pollutants around the facility that could aggravate the conditions of patients.

In order to help the organization achieve LEED certification, Nemours chose Skanska USA Building Inc. in June to oversee the construction process. Skanska has a tremendous international and national reputation for building truly innovative structures, and their Central Florida team brings strong health care facility project experience including oversight of the Parrish Healthcare Center in Port St. John in 2004. This structure became the first outpatient facility to be awarded the LEED® Silver green building certification in Florida. Also, Skanska was recently named Business of the Year by the USGBC Central Florida Chapter for their continued “commitment to green building” and “leadership of sustainable practices” in the region.

Skanska held its first subcontractor prequalification open house for the construction of Nemours Children’s Hospital on December 15 and 16. This meeting provided the award-winning construction manager an opportunity to inform the local subcontractor and vendor community about the health care campus project and gave them an overview of the potential schedule, prequalification process and procurement timeline. The meetings also covered the project’s safety program, LEED certification process as well as the Minority and Women Business Enterprise (MWBE) program. Nemours and Skanska consider the MWBE program an important part of the construction process and have agreed to identify and reach out to local MWBE firms in order to maximize the number of opportunities for these potential subcontractors and vendors. A specific MWBE open house for Skanska projects will be held at their Orlando offices in January and the Nemours project will be a featured topic.