Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, Wash., will receive $25,000 in products and services as grand-prize winner in Siemens Industry Inc.'s 2011 Smartest Building in America Challenge.

Jackson South Community Hospital in Miami will receive $15,000 in products and services as runner-up.

“Having the facility managers of two hospitals win Smartest Buildings in America demonstrates the sophistication of building management in the health-care industry and their dedication to leveraging building-automation systems to improve their efficiency and environment,” Rich Lattanzi, vice president of Control Products and Systems, Building Technologies Division, Siemens Industry Inc., said. 

Contestants were judged based in part on how innovatively they use their building-automation systems to achieve business, efficiency, and sustainability goals and how Siemens systems have contributed to making their buildings more efficient. Video submissions were evaluated for creativity and artistic merit and how well they articulated the innovations, features, and capabilities orchestrated by the building owner, facility manager, or consulting-specifying engineer to make a building “smart.”

Providence St. Peter Hospital’s "facility staff did a great job of portraying how it uses its APOGEE building-automation system to provide a comfortable environment for its patients, physicians, staff, and visitors,” Lattanzi said. “It also qualified for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star building program.”

Jackson South Community Hospital’s "team highlighted how its building-automation system achieved greater efficiencies and cost despite a $102 million expansion project that doubled the building’s size,” Lattanzi added. “The hospital’s TALON system incorporates innovations such as Wi-Fi and the use of actual mechanical floor plans to help the hospital’s maintenance team respond to emergencies more quickly. In addition, the system’s ability to capture and utilize building data allowed the team to decide to run the hospital on one chiller plant instead of two.”

Providence St. Peter Hospital and Jackson South Community Hospital have the option of accepting their prizes in Siemens products and services or donating them to a charity of their choice.

For more on Siemens’ Smartest Building in America contest and to view the winning videos, click here.