RECENT FEATURE ARTICLES

Apprenticeships continue to play a key part in attracting new talent to the healthcare sector, and are a core focus for IHEEM; at a recent roundtable discussion facilitated by the Institute, participants including representatives from NHS Trusts, NHSI, the supplier sector, HefmA, training providers, and IHEEM itself, got together to discuss apprenticeship and effective succession planning.

With women currently making up only 12 per cent of the UK’s engineering workforce, HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports on the goals and planned work of IHEEM’s new Diversity and Inclusion Working Group. Two of the key initial priorities for it will be to champion women’s role in healthcare engineering and estate management, and to seek to do all it can to encourage more female entrants to the profession.

June’s Hospital Innovations 2018 in London event saw the second IHEEM roundtable held in IHEEM’s 75th Anniversary year focus on NHS apprenticeships, with a particular emphasis on ongoing work by NHSI, in conjunction with the professional institutes, to establish a national engineering apprenticeship for healthcare engineers. HEJ’s August 2018 issue (pages 32-36) reported on the first half of the discussions, while here we cover the second part.

Like his predecessor, Pete Sellars, Ian Hinitt, who will become IHEEM’s President for the next two years at the Institute’s 2018 AGM next month, began his career as an apprentice. He says the skills he learnt as a tradesman – starting as an apprentice fitter – are, for him, ‘the very best of life skills’, having instilled in him a strong team-working ethic, self-reliance, resilience, and ‘a life-long passion for innovation’.

Russ Sharer, Vice-President of Global Marketing for Fulham, a ‘manufacturer of innovative and energyefficient lighting sub-systems for lighting manufacturers and distributors worldwide’, explores the capabilities of Bluetooth Mesh in faster tracking and location of key equipment in hospitals, and explains how the technology can easily be embedded into its LED drivers.

Eastwood Park Training employs ‘healthcare experts’ to contribute to the training delivered at its South Gloucestershire training centre, with its philosophy that the sector perspective ‘ensures that the learning reflects what really takes place in hospital estates’. Here, with the focus on water safety, three Eastwood Park water trainers provide different perspectives on the topic and the issues facing estates teams currently.

With growing demand for healthcare services, and acutely limited resources, tracking the location of hospital beds and mattresses with RFID can see significant efficiency gains and improvements in patient safety. So says the RFID product manager for Healthcare at RFiD Discovery, who provides an overview of the available technologies.

A new 344-bedded hospital opened late last year just outside Dumfries, jointly designed by architectural practices Ryder Architecture and NBBJ, was conceived as a ‘garden hospital’, with a design focused on light and landscape made possible by its rural setting. Wards are surrounded by garden spaces, some of which play an integral part in therapeutic practice.

The UK and Eire distributor of a Norwegian-developed vacuum drainage technology that reportedly consumes one-sixth to one-eighth the volume of water used during flushing of traditional ‘gravity’ toilets, sets out this and the technology’s other practical and cost-saving benefits.

HEJ’s editor spoke to former chairman of the IHEEM Publications Committee, Amos Millington, about his engineering career – which began with an apprenticeship at legendary British aviation manufacturer, de Havilland, some of his most memorable experiences, and the people he met along the way.

June’s Hospital Innovations 2018 event saw the year’s second IHEEM roundtable focus on NHS apprenticeships, with a particular emphasis on ongoing work to establish a national engineering apprenticeship for healthcare engineers

In an article first published in Australian magazine, Healthcare Facilities, a mineral insulated cable specialist discusses the potential consequences should the electrical wiring systems that connect vital fire safety systems fail during a fire, and actions to take to minimise the risk.

Bill Algeo, a building technologist at Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg, explains how the HSC’s Facility Management Department played a key role in providing input and expertise for a redevelopment project that is seeing the creation of a new Women’s Hospital in the Canadian city, located in the state of Manitoba.

HEJ reports on the presentation of the Lord Carter Award for 2018, and the conferring of ‘Highly Commended’ certificates to two ‘runners-up’, at the recent Hospital Innovations 2018 event in London.

Dave Lancaster, Applications specialist (Building Services) from plumbing, heating, cooling, and infrastructure specialist, Uponor, discusses the risk of Legionella in hospital water systems, and the ways in which that risk can be addressed through design best practice and pipe specification.

Howorth Air Technology will still be best-known to many in healthcare as the company which, working with worldrenowned orthopaedic surgeon, Sir John Charnley, in the early 1960s, developed the world’s first ultraclean surgical enclosure. Today, sales of its Exflow UCV canopy system remain strong, but the company now offers an ever broader range of complementary, and increasingly ‘connected’, operating theatre and ITU products.

With the percutaneous devices used in interventional radiology departments becoming ever more complex, and more and more minimally invasive procedures being undertaken in conventional operating theatres, a new ‘breed’ of so-called ‘hybrid’ theatres has emerged, and is now a feature of many hospitals worldwide. A look at the optimal design of such theatres.

A look at a new Centre of Wellbeing designed by architects, 3DReid, for the Thistle Foundation, an Edinburghbased charitable organisation that supports disabled people to live independently, and those with long-term conditions to better manage their lives.

Fire safety is a huge concern for hospitals, which rely on running smoothly to keep waiting times to a minimum and ensure that patients, staff, and visitors, are safe. However, as such facilities continue to evolve, they can face a growing number of new fire safety challenges, with advances in technology and demand for better services placing a heavy reliance on cables to keep equipment and their supporting infrastructure running safely. Paul Gretton, lead marketing manager – Cable Management, at Legrand UK & Ireland, explains why using effective and future-proof firestopping in healthcare environments is crucial.

Effective use of technology can significantly impact the design and day-to-day running of NHS estates, with the power to make buildings more efficient, create income generation opportunities, and help ‘future-proof’ the estate long-term