Hospitals are energy gluttons. With 24/7/365 operating schedules and stringent requirements for air quality in ORs and other clinical areas, an acute-care hospital will gobble up about twice the energy per square foot of, say, a commercial office building.

It is an achievement worth noting, therefore, when a major hospital achieves LEED Platinum status, especially when that hospital attains 14 of a possible 17 points for Energy & Atmosphere and 11 of 15 for Indoor Environment Quality.

Kudos, therefore, to Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas, a 169-bed, 503,000-sf children's hospital and trauma center in Austin, which gained the coveted top spot in green certification (under LEED-NC 2.1) in early 2009, making it the first LEED Platinum hospital in the U.S.

Phil Risner, PE, LEED AP, the owner's project manager and building systems........read more