Operational Excellence
June 1, 2007
KP National Facilities Leader Delivers Keynote at Sustainable Operations Summit in New Mexico
Christine Malcolm, Kaiser Permanente's senior vice president for hospital
strategy and national facilities, delivered a presentation at an invitation-only
conference at which executives discussed how their organizations promote
both environmental stewardship and bottom-line financial results.
The Sustainable Operations Summit, held June 3-5 just north of Albuquerque, N.M., seeks to help America's leading corporations incorporate more "green thinking" into everyday operations. Leading the list of keynote speakers was former Vice President Al Gore, whose Academy Award-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," helped drive the environment as an urgent issue in the United States and beyond.
Executives who attended the Sustainable Operations Summit came from leading American corporations and public agencies such as Citigroup, Intel, Apple Computer, The Ohio State University, the City of New York, and the Los Angeles Unified School District. Speakers also included Andrew Winston, co-author of the best-selling book "Green to Gold," Rick Fedrizzi, president and founder of the United States Green Building Council, and Martin Chavez, mayor of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Malcolm, who leads Kaiser Permanente's 2,600-person National Facilities Services organization, is responsible for managing the organization's real estate portfolio, facility maintenance and operations, security, biomedical engineering and the design and construction of Kaiser Permanente's medical and administrative facilities. Kaiser Permanente's capital development and replacement program is the largest such effort in the United States.
Recently completed Kaiser Permanente facilities feature such "green" building aspects as PVC-free carpeting, photovoltaic electricity systems, "green" roofs, and other environmentally friendly substances and systems. Others facilities under construction have many green elements included in the designs. The Green Guide, a National Geographic publication, honored Kaiser Permanente with the magazine's "Green Gadfly Award" in 2006 for KP's environmental stewardship efforts.
Other recent green accomplishments for Kaiser Permanente include:
- Eliminated the purchase and disposal of 40 tons of hazardous chemicals
- Saved more than $10 million per year through energy conservation strategies
- Diverted thousands of tons of demolition debris from landfills
- Sponsored the California Sustainable Hospital Forum, through which 400 architects, designers and engineers learn state-of-the-art green building techniques.
The Sustainable Operations Summit ran through June 5. For more information, view the summit's website.
