Using the NHS Environmental Assessment Tool (NEAT), they achieved and ‘Excellent’ and ‘Very Good’ ratings, respectively.
After the recent assessments, the new build in the Barts hospital scored 74% and the refurbishment of the Alex Wing in The Royal London Hospital 65%. To meet the contractual requirements the team needed to achieve at least 70% for the new build and 55% for the refurbishment against the NEAT tracker.
NEAT was developed in 2002 to measure the environmental impact of a hospital building and ensures it has minimal impact on the environment.
It is a self assessment tool, and requires the collection of evidence for each point it measures. It is therefore an ongoing process and on a huge project such as the Barts and the London, it takes years to complete. Skanska has been using the tool since the commencement of the design process, collecting the evidence required to carry out the assessments over the construction period, that started six years ago.
By gathering this evidence at such an early stage, the NEAT assessment was able to measure the environmental impact of the hospitals during construction. Because the majority of the points are based on the design and construction of the hospital, the following categories form different sections of the assessment: management, energy, transport, water, landscape and ecology, materials, internal environment, pollution, social and operational waste.
Together with the completed new build assessment for the Royal London Hospital that was completed in 2012, this now concludes the assessment across the projects.