Health Facilities Group

Kiowa County Memorial

First Critical Access Hospital (CAH) in the nation to achieve

LEED Platinum certification.

The final push is over; the final documents have been submitted and reviewed.  Kiowa County Memorial Hospital is the third hospital worldwide to achieve LEED® Platinum certification, having done so with 55 points, the highest points total in the United States (LEED v2.x).  It is also the first Critical Access Hospital (CAH) in the nation to achieve LEED Platinum certification, and the first complete hospital in Kansas to achieve LEED certification at any level.

One of the overarching challenges was certifying a rural hospital under a LEED reference guide intended for urban commercial occupancies (such as office buildings).  Some of those incongruities, combined with project conditions, provided opportunities for the project team to achieve credit compliance in unusual ways. 

One example is stormwater runoff.  According to the credit, stormwater runoff should be reduced by 25%, compared to the existing conditions.  However, the site was a basin for a drainage area much larger than the site boundary, which experienced periodic flooding and had to be pumped dry. 

The site design alleviated the flooding issue and increased soil permeability, but solving the flooding issue without resorting to pumping water off the site obviously meant increasing runoff.  The project team demonstrated that, had the original flooding problem been solved prior to the hospital’s acquisition of the site, the project would have indeed reduced overall runoff by improving soil permeability and increasing on-site retention capability.  The GBCI reviewer agreed that we had met the intent of the credit by improving the overall conditions.

Every project provides learning opportunities; future articles will explore what we achieved at Greensburg, why we didn’t pursue certain credits, what we might have done differently, and how
we can apply those lessons moving forward.