The Conclude Consultancy

The Conclude Consultancy Limited has been in a dialogue with Health Facilities Scotland over the course of 2012, culiminating in an invitation for Professor Bacon to address their annual conference in November.  A copy of the presentation can be found here:

http://www.hfs.scot.nhs.uk/conference-/conference-2012/programme/parallel-sessions-c/

HFS are very interested in the new building science developed by Conclude called OCCUPANCY ANALYTICS ™. Scotland has an aggressive low carbon agenda and the Sottish government is determined to reduce the carbon impact of the health estate. A report by Davies Langdon last year concluded that the pay-back period for improving the energy and carbon performance of existing buildings was going to run into decades.  Clearly we need to make fundamental changes in the way that we design and operate our hospitals.

Here at Conclude, we believe that the solution to this challenge is by society learning to use it’s built assets quite differently, because it is only through a change in how we use our built assets, and specifically how we change the way that we use our hospitals, can we hope to achieve a the major  reduction in carbon emissions required by the Carbon Reduction Commitment.  It is the results of our work over the last two years that provides us with the confidence to substantiate this belief.  Nevertheless  it remains a significant challenge for Trusts and Hospital Boards in Scotland, England and Wales.  The scale of the problem can be appreciated by reading the Sustainability Development Unit’s 2012 Carbon Footprint report:

http://www.sdu.nhs.uk/documents/resources/Carbon_Footprint_Published_2012.pdf

Note from this report how building efficiency is forecast to get worse.  Indeed in most Strategic Health Authorities in Engand, carbon emission’s have risen over the reporting period.  This should not be a surprise, because the Royal Academy of Engineering commented in 2011 that buildings today perform little better than they did in the 1980’s.  They too lamented the demise of building science. Yet there is an alternative that some have commented is all too obvious: change the way that we operate our hospitals!  Conclude’s work in this area has clearly demonstrated the dramatic effects of changes in both how hospitals are operated as well as how they need to be designed.

Our work has been warmly received by clincians, and when asked why they feel so positive about it, the common answer has been: “for the first time we have real, tangible evidence of the impacts of our working practices”. Our work truly bridges the ‘Great Divide’ between designer and users, and provides the basis for a new dialogue between them. Our work speaks to the clinicians because it is evidence-based, and directly corelates their working practices to energy and carbon outcomes, as well as health outcomes.

Please do contact us to find out more.

 

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