Complex air-conditioning system at Huddinge Hospital area
At Huddinge Hospital area outside Stockholm, while critically ill patients are undergoing surgery and research teams are working with radioactive substances, Bravida, on behalf of Locum, is carrying out complex work to improve the energy efficiency of the hospital area, without suspending or disrupting routine healthcare activities.
As construction engineer Nicole Brantfalk describes Bravida’s work to make the air-treatment system at Huddinge Hospital area more energy efficient, an image comes to mind: a Rubik’s Cube. This project seems equally complex: Bravida is updating the ventilation in a multi-storey building, while ensuring all routine activities can continue as normal.
“The complexity is that on-site services are extremely sensitive to any impact. When operating on a seriously ill person, the air quality must remain stable, and this imposes strict requirements on us to plan our work carefully and be extremely safety-conscious,” says Nicole.
Locum, which is Region Stockholm’s property company, has commissioned Bravida to make the building more energy efficient by updating the air treatment plant. The system supplies fresh, filtered and heated or cooled supply air to the premises. It is also used to evacuate air from corridors, toilets and rooms with poorer air quality.
“Thanks to the remodelling and installation of more efficient new fans, the property will benefit from reduced energy consumption and improved heat recovery from the exhaust air,” says Nicole.
Demanding requirements for reliability
The hospital houses laboratory and specialist services covering the entire Stockholm region, which entails demanding requirements for ventilation, fire safety and maintaining operational reliability. To minimise any impact on normal activities, much of the work is carried out in the evening and at night.
However, to allow work on the new, energy-efficient air-conditioning system to begin, Bravida first needs to construct a temporary installation. Once this is in place, the old one can be removed and construction of the new system can begin.
Careful planning is required at every stage to ensure that everything is carried out safely for everyone involved. One example of the complexity of the project is how work on a ventilation shaft on one of the floors affected several other floors – housing very different activities.
“A great deal of planning and coordination with all the different departments is required to enable us to carry out the work without any risk of disrupting the healthcare activities and research taking place on site,” says Nicole.
Heat recovery
The new ventilation system has been designed to streamline energy use. One improvement is construction of a larger space to house batteries used to recover heat from the exhaust air to the supply air, as well as to heat or cool the air supplied to the premises. Glycol is used to prevent the hot air transported through the pipes between the recovery batteries in the supply and exhaust air from freezing. Previously, the glycol was destroyed, but now, with the new battery area, the hospital can recover all the glycol.
“Energy recovery is an important part of the project and thanks to the updated batteries, we can now be even better at harnessing heated energy from the exhaust air and recovering this to heat the supply air,” says Nicole.
Communication and collaboration
The key to success with such a complex project is communication and collaboration. Almost every day, Bravida’s project managers hold meetings with the various parties involved in the construction project. Everything needs to be planned down to the smallest detail, but not everything can be anticipated.
“It’s an old building and we can encounter unexpected complications at any time. This may then necessitate an unplanned stop in the work, and various measures must be implemented that we had not planned for. This unpredictability and complexity are what make the work so interesting. We are constantly faced with new challenges and have to come up with smart solutions together,” says Nicole.
Facts about the project:
Client: Locum.
Bravida’s assignment: Heating and plumbing, electrical infrastructure, ventilation and automation.
Schedule: August 2023 to July 2025.
Number of employees from Bravida involved in the project: Around 60 people.