At RLF, helping to reduce the carbon footprint in the built environment is not just a marketing platform, it is what we do. Currently in construction, the USACE Kansas City District Leonard Wood Hospital Replacement has passed the GBC Design Review, signifying the design phase has met the stringent UFC 1-200-02 High Performance Sustainable Building (HPSB) Guiding Principles mandated by the Green Business Initiative (GBI). The Guiding Principles, developed specifically for DOD construction, stipulate requirements for integrated design principles, energy performance, water conservation, indoor environmental quality, the environmental impact of materials, and climate change risks.
This world-class Hospital and Clinic Replacement for Fort Leonard Wood rivals facilities found in the civilian sector. The design is efficient, flexible, and integrates sustainable strategies that minimize energy consumption and conserve natural resources while serving as a state-of-the-art healthcare facility for future generations of Army personnel and their families. Energy modeling and life-cycle cost analysis helped identify initial design features to reduce operating costs and improve energy and water efficiency.
Eight major energy efficiency measures were developed to reduce life-cycle costs and energy consumption from the ASHRAE 90.1 2013 baseline by 34.5%. These measures have a combined discounted payback of 3.6 years through energy and water savings and offer a rate of return of over 25%. The additional costs are less than 1% of the overall budget and result in a savings of $502,700 per year in energy and water costs compared to the baseline. They also reduce the facility’s carbon footprint by over 3,400 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. This is equivalent to the carbon sequestered annually by over 700 acres of forest. Additional sustainable measures incorporated into the design include:
• Optimize natural light and views from most occupied spaces to balance use with energy savings. Glass curtainwall is predominant throughout the building maximizing daylighting, and views, and providing energy savings for 9% of the hospital and 11% of the clinic.
• Optimize building orientation on-site to reduce energy usage, improve wayfinding to the facility, and minimize site disturbance. The hospital is set into the rolling terrain creating a service entrance on the lowest level with all public/staff entrances one level above. This allows for simple “at-grade” access at the five main points (combined public entrance for hospital and clinic, emergency walk-in entrance, separated ambulance entrance, service entrance, and staff entrance) and minimal site disturbance balancing on-site cut and fill.
• Minimize building materials and simplify construction to save energy, time, and costs. The exterior is primarily composed of insulating precast panels designed for minimal lifts using specialty sub-contractors within a 500-mile radius to reduce transportation costs and energy. The remaining enclosure combines a TTP single-ply roof system with a high insulation and reflectance value to save energy and a double-glazed insulating curtainwall system with shading elements at key points. The solution provides a 40% savings over similar building types.
• Co-locate services with similar or same operating times to save materials, energy, time, and costs. Hospital and outpatient clinic functions are separated, and programs with similar operational times co-located to allow for portions of the building to shut down during off hours. This results in non-duplication and over-engineering of departments, reducing engineering system loads and saving materials and energy to construct, operate, and maintain. This integrative solution led to a 40% savings over the similar building type in this location.