Opened in July 2022, the nine-story Phil and Jennie Gaglardi Tower at Royal Inland Hospital (RIH) is a state-of-the-art facility that serves Kamloops and surrounding communities.
Not only was the tower built with direct input from medical staff, health-care teams, local health-care workers and Indigenous partners, it was also designed and built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold standards.
LEED is a third-party certification program and an internationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings. The tower is the latest IH building to be recognized with a LEED Gold certification thanks in part to these energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable features:
Michael Morton, director, Major Capital Projects Delivery, oversaw the LEED certification process. “Achieving LEED certification starts right with the design and goes all the way through to construction and beyond,” says Michael. “Ten years ago, what used to earn you a point toward certification is now part of common building practices. So now we need to apply other construction strategies to earn points.”
According to the Canada Green Building Council, following LEED practices help lower carbon emissions, conserve resources, and reduce operating costs by prioritizing sustainable practices.
“With these sustainable building approaches, our patients, health-care workers and staff, as well as the wider Kamloops community, benefit from lower greenhouse gas emissions, energy and water savings, and better indoor air quality,” says Lorne Sisley, executive director, Corporate Services. “Building to LEED standards also supports our key goal of reducing the environmental impact of our operations, as outlined in our Climate Change and Sustainability Roadmap.”
All new Interior Health (IH) builds and major renovations are designed and constructed to achieve LEED Gold or similar building standards in line with the BC Government’s commitment to low-carbon, climate-resilient and sustainable health-care facilities.
When rebuilding, replacing or retrofitting our buildings, IH proactively plans to minimize climate risk, and assesses opportunities to not only upgrade our systems, but to design future facilities to minimize our greenhouse gas emissions and our energy use.
Other LEED certified IH buildings include:
Our Commitment to Sustainability
Climate Change and Sustainability Roadmap 2023–2028
Community Climate Resiliency Planning
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Sahra joined IH just two months after graduating from Okanagan College, and has served in many roles with IH that led her to where she is today.
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