The Energy to Improve Hospitals

The Challenge

The very nature of the project was a challenge. First, Windemuller had to fit the hospital’s main electrical distribution equipment into an existing mechanical room in the basement of the hospital. This mechanical room was located on the opposite side of the hospital campus from the existing electrical room. Second, once the new electrical room was set up, we had to cut over the hospital’s electrical loads from the old equipment to the new equipment.

Perhaps most crucially, we had to execute all electrical cutovers without disrupting hospital operations. In a hospital setting, conducting a job like this isn’t a matter of minimizing downtime, but of eliminating it altogether. In order to retain accreditation, hospitals must have certain systems—including CT machines and X-ray machines—online 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. In other words, Windemuller couldn’t execute a planned shutdown of a certain X-ray machine unless the hospital had redundant machine on the premises.