FEATURE ARTICLES

A look, by a lawyer, at the implications of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 for those procuring goods and services within the NHS.

HEJ reports on three different, but equally successful, approaches to engineering apprenticeships, as the importance of passing on skills and expertise to a new generation assumes increasing significance.

With IHEEM’s flagship Healthcare Estates 2015 show due to open its doors on 20 October, HEJ focuses on some of the key themes of this year’s event, and highlights a number of new features.

This autumn will see the opening of the new Alder Hey in the Park hospital in Liverpool – believed to be Europe’s first children’s hospital to be constructed within a parkland setting.

A focus on a £520,000 project by integrated architectural, property, and construction company, Pellings, to refurbish the Danesbury Neurological Centre in Welwyn.

The key responsibilities associated with reducing asbestos risk in healthcare buildings explained by an expert in the field.

A new 18-month distance learning Diploma in Medical Equipment Technologies has won praise from participants, who report significant benefits in their day-to-day roles.

With the backdrop of an ageing population, the Department of Health’s new HBN 08-02 guidance offers specific advice on creating ‘dementia- friendly’ health and social care environments.

A senior decontamination engineer working for NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership considers the array of standards and guidance in place on effective instrument decontamination

Insufficient planning led to considerable delays in the completion of a project to remodel part of the oldest hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, with a significant impact on clinical efficiencies.

The key considerations when choosing lighting for healthcare settings, with a reminder that, while important, there is more to effective lighting schemes than simply cost control.

The architects for the new Gold Coast University Hospital in Queensland describe some of the considerable innovation in the design of the A$1.7 bn hospital, one of the state’s largest clinical teaching and research facilities.

Eastwood Park’s medical gas portfolio manager challenges ‘the norm’ in medical gas training, and raises a number of thought-provoking questions.

The latest nurse call systems enable healthcare facilities to incorporate a wealth of other functions, as providers increasingly look to connect up to other infrastructure to improve efficiency, provide better care, and enable detailed monitoring of staff response times.

As technology continues to improve the performance and capability of access control products, Grant Macdonald, managing director of access control company, Codelocks, takes a look at the functionality now available from the latest systems, and suggests ways that healthcare estates and facilities personnel with responsibility for security can reap the benefits.

Eastwood Park Training’s healthcare fire safety expert, Paul Beech, an independent fire safety consultant, and managing director of Fagus Fire Safety Consultancy, raises concerns about the apparent lack of response in healthcare circles to changes in fire safety guidance. Here he focuses on the key changes to HTM 05-01 (2nd edn 2013) and HTM 05-02, the latter updated just over 12 months ago, for those responsible for fire safety in healthcare organisations.

At an event held on 20 March at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, representatives from some of the UK’s largest healthcare estates – among a larger cross section of delegates – were asked the question: ‘Legionella compliance – are you doing it wrong?’

Independent consultant to the healthcare sector, Dr Melvyn Langford, outlines his concerns that, in many cases, the emergency diesel generators so critical to the resilience and uninterrupted operation of clinical and other functions within healthcare facilities may not be performing to reliability levels set out in guidance and codes of practice, and sets out recommendations to reduce the risk of breakdown, necessitating, he argues, a multi-disciplinary approach.

Catherine Zeliotis, a senior architect and healthcare leader at Stantec, and the lead clinical designer for the new Cancer Centre at Guy’s Hospital in London, describes both the company’s key design philosophies, and how it overcame a number of challenging practical issues – including not displacing the remains of a buried Roman boat found on the site – to create the blueprint for what the practice, and indeed all the project participants, believe will be a ground-breaking new cancer treatment complex.

Dr Nebil Achour BSc MSc PhD, a researcher at Loughborough University who has 13 years’ experience and expertise in disaster prevention – with particular focus on the resilience of healthcare facilities – examines some of the ways that business continuity and resilience can be ‘built into’ hospitals and other healthcare facilities, to enable them to remain functional in the event of major ‘disaster’ or ‘hazard’ events such as earthquake, fire, or flood. He draws on his own work, experience, and reflections, and considers some of the key international thinking and approaches.