Kahn Pavilion receives highest energy and environmental design designation from U.S. Green Building Council

The D. Dan and Betty Kahn Healthcare Pavilion was designed and built with the goal of achieving LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum Green Building Certification, the highest level of recognition from the U.S. Green Building Council, or USGBC, for building efficiency and sustainability.

And earlier this month, the pavilion officially achieved this prestigious designation, making it the largest LEED version 4 platinum-certified healthcare building in the world. 

“The project started with needing to increase our capacity to improve access to high-acuity, complex care, reaffirming the talent and expertise uniquely provided by our excellent care teams,” said Tony Denton, J.D., MHSA, Senior Vice President and Chief Environmental, Social and Governance Officer at Michigan Medicine.

“But we also intended to demonstrate our long-standing commitment to environmental stewardship and play a central role in supporting the university’s growing environmental sustainability efforts. It was always important for us to emphasize that, as leaders in the healthcare space, we are focused on environmental efficiencies and effectiveness when it comes to how we use various resources that impact climate health, including in design and use of this new facility.”

The USGBC uses a points-based system to award its LEED designations for proficiency in sustainable design, construction and operations standards. While the data gathering process has been in place for several years, the final and formal application for LEED designation was submitted at the end of February. 

Planning for the 690,000-square-foot facility goes back more than a decade, and its role in demonstrating Michigan Medicine’s — and the university’s — commitment to environmental sustainability was part of the process even in its earliest stages.

Chip Amoe, J.D., M.P.A., U-M Health’s Sustainability Officer, said achieving LEED designation is a very public reflection of Michigan Medicine’s sustainability priorities that are designed to improve the health and well-being of the patients, employees and communities it serves.

“For example, our recycling programs are designed to try to avoid landfill waste, our anesthesiology teams prioritize anesthetic agents that are less harmful to the environment,” he said. “It's a chapter in a book that's much broader, and we are so proud of this achievement.”

LEED certification requires building projects to consider energy and water use, materials selection, managing waste, indoor environmental quality and more. 

“As the architects and engineers were designing the pavilion, they had to strategize how to make the hospital as sustainable as possible,” explained Rusty Hudson, M.Arch., Construction Engineering Lead for the project. “They had to meticulously document each decision in order to apply for the LEED Platinum certification.”

The implementation of these best practices is then evaluated, and points are awarded corresponding to one of the four levels of LEED certification: Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum.

“It is truly a massive accomplishment to be the largest healthcare facility in the world to achieve Platinum-level LEED certification,” said Corrie Pennington-Block, Project Management Lead for the pavilion. “We’re all so tremendously honored to be a part of the team that helped make this happen.”

About Michigan Medicine: At Michigan Medicine, we advance health to serve Michigan and the world. We pursue excellence every day in our 12 hospitals and hundreds of clinics statewide, as well as educate the next generation of physicians, health professionals and scientists in our U-M Medical School.

Michigan Medicine includes the U-M Medical School and University of Michigan Health, which includes the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital, University Hospital, the Frankel Cardiovascular Center, Kellogg Eye Center, University of Michigan Health-West, University of Michigan-Sparrow and the Rogel Cancer Center. The U-M Medical School is one of the nation’s biomedical research powerhouses, with total research funding of more than $800 million.

More information is available at www.michiganmedicine.org.