Smooth running for Vic's first all-electric hospital

Asset management company Honeywell has won a 25-year contract to provide building automation solutions for Victoria’s first fully electric hospital.

With an injection of more than $900 million from the Victorian Government, the new Melton Hospital in Melbourne’s west is expected to be completed in 2029.

The 274-bed facility will include a 24-hour emergency department, an intensive care unit, maternity and neonatal services, mental health services, radiology services and ambulatory care.

When complete, it will have the capacity to treat 130,000 patients each year and see almost 60,000 patients in the emergency department.

Honeywell will be installing its building management solutions to help make Melton Hospital more energy efficient, automated and secure. These solutions include the integration of Honeywell Forge Enterprise Performance Management software, which enables condition-based maintenance to help improve the resiliency of critical systems around the clock, reduce unplanned reactive work and lower energy costs.

Honeywell Forge’s machine learning capabilities continuously study a building’s energy consumption patterns — a feature that will allow the hospital to automatically adjust to optimal energy-saving settings without compromising critical air quality.

“Honeywell’s technologically advanced building automation solutions combined with our decades of experience in total asset management make us uniquely positioned to support the building services for the Melton Hospital both today and over the next 25 years,” said Lisa Whitehead, vice president and general manager, Pacific, Honeywell Building Automation.

“As a partner to the Melton Hospital, we are committed to helping deliver Victoria’s first energy-efficient hospital that provides an optimum indoor environment with a best-in-class design built to address the critical needs of patients.”

In order to maximise ecological efficiencies in all elements of its design, construction and operation, Melton Hospital will embed ecologically sustainable development (ESD) technologies. Honeywell will manage the building in alignment with these efficiency goals, optimising peak energy demand, energy consumption and water consumption costs so that the project remains flexible and adaptable to changing social and climatic conditions.

The hospital is being delivered as a public-private partnership. Western Health is the public operator of all clinical services, while the Exemplar Health consortium, through a contract from the Victorian Government, is responsible for the hospital’s financing, design, construction and maintenance for 25 years following the facility’s construction completion.

The Exemplar Health consortium includes Capella Capital as sponsor and investor; Lendlease Infrastructure Investments and Invesis as investors; Lendlease as the builder; and Honeywell and Compass Group as facilities and maintenance management providers.

“This work will help deliver a critical uplift in the capacity of public health services in Melton,” said Sarah Neaves, director, Capella Capital.

“As Melbourne’s outer west continues to grow, the Melton Hospital project will allow the hospital to better support its patients, families and staff. We look forward to working closely with the Victorian Government, Western Health and consortium members to deliver this critical piece of health infrastructure.”

Images courtesy of Honeywell.