North York General Hospital Is Ontario's First To Secure BOMA BEST Silver

North York General Hospital is Ontario’s first hospital to secure Silver-level BOMA BEST certification, advised by JLL and its project and development services group. Above at the presentation are BOMA Toronto president Susan Allen, past chair and Equity ICI Real Estate Services president Randal Frobelius, and NYGH president/CEO Tim Rutledge. While hospitals aren’t revenue-producing assets, notes JLL’s Adrian Sluga, who worked on NYGH’s BOMA certification, the program’s benefits are all about helping the hospital deliver a better on-site experience for its staff and the community at large.

Opened in 1968, NYGH, a 657k SF building on an 18-acre site (with 2,500 full-time staff and 411 staffed patient beds), earned BOMA BEST Silver for achieving an overall rating of 73% in an audit of its energy and water consumption, waste diversion and indoor / outdoor environmental management, among other areas of focus. JLL helped NYGH track and organize the information required to earn the certification. NYGH VP Cliff Harvey says his team was “pleasantly surprised” with how well the hospital did, and now has several new initiatives planned “to improve our status to Gold level.”

That kind of spirit pleases Adrian (seen above with daughter Arianna) who years before becoming JLL's commissioning and building analytics SVP competed on Canada's national track team (he’s seen inset, mid javelin toss). He notes the drive to achieve BOMA greatness isn’t about saving money, at least not exclusively. More important is that the program inspires hospital staff to go the extra mile. “I liken it to my athletic experience,” says Adrian, whose team also led TD Centre to BOMA re-certification. “You wake up every day saying, 'I’m going to work hard today to perform better tomorrow.'”