Tristan,
First and foremost I would like to commend you on this concept, obtaining recognition from your peers is a wonderful catalyst for maintaining the creative edge.

So here's a solution I think is innovative...I hope you agree.

We were developing an In-Patient Post-Partum unit in one of our Hospitals. As luck would have it the decision was to renovate the oldest building on campus for this new unit. The building chosen is circa 1965 and is "vertically" challenged deck to deck. In addition, the building has a reinforced concrete structure, making beam cuts and the like unachievable. To maximize natural light, relatively high ceilings were specified. This caused a small problem...the VAV boxes and reheat coils needed to provide patient comfort no longer fit into the remaining interstitial space.

Our innovation led use to install a custom fabricated Mechanical Equipment Room atop the building in which we installed 85 VAV boxes, reheat coils and all of the associated equipment associated with them. This allowed the ceiling heights to be raised even higher than that requested by the Architects.

We then found that there were several other unique advantages. Other than the requisite Fire Sprinkler piping, there is no water carrying piping in any of the patient rooms, all but eliminating the potential for water leaks and the subsequent potential for mold issues. Additionally, we reduced the amount of secondary hot water piping required to feed the reheat coils by approximately 80% as only one horizontal run of piping was required to feed all of the coils whereas the initial design would have had 2 per floor (one on each side of the corridor) for each of the 3 floors served.

We are able to easily maintain and even preventatively maintain the VAVs because they are located in an accessible location, not above the hung ceiling, above the patient bed.

This entire "room" (it's 210 feet long) was fabricated off-site helping us to reduce the on-site debris generated in the construction of this portion of the work, decreased the overall project schedule and ultimately the project cost.

The project did not receive any credit for any of the innovations that this unique scheme contained. Two of the floors of this project, registered under LEED ID+C V3, have been certified LEED Platinum.

Thanks for considering this portion of our project for your innovation award.

Be well.

Neil Rosen AIA, LEED AP BD+C