FEATURE ARTICLES

In an article first published in the Spring 2015 issue of Canadian Healthcare Facilities, the magazine’s editor, Clare Tattersall, describes a project which is seeing undertaken one of the largest healthcare redevelopments in Ontario, as the new ‘campus-style’ 457 inpatient-bedded Oakville Hospital takes shape prior to a scheduled opening later this year.

Very close proximity to existing hospital buildings, managing the craning of 31 sizeable off-site built modules and eight large air-handling unit sections onto site without disrupting hospital traffic or operations, and the need to complete the new building to an extremely tight schedule, were among the challenges successfully met by MTX Contracts recently during its completion of a new ‘dementia-friendly’ 30-bed decant ward at Walsall Manor Hospital in the West Midlands.

Chris Norris from Siniat, a frequent supplier of plasterboard for NHS projects, looks at the estates challenges facing the service, and how good building material choices can directly impact on patient outcomes.

According to specialist in optimised resource management, Veolia, combined heat and power (CHP) ‘has been proven for its effectiveness in reducing carbon emissions, thanks to the efficient way that the technology simultaneously derives power and heat from the combustion process’.

In 2013 Peter Sellars, head of Profession for Estates & Facilities Policy at the Department of Health, successfully bid for £50 million from the Treasury to help finance a range of ‘spend-to-save’ energy efficiency initiatives across the NHS in England. In all 117 energy efficiency projects were initiated across 48 English NHS organisations – funded through a dedicated NHS Energy Efficiency Fund.

Electrical engineering and estates personnel at Sodexo – which manages a wide range of soft and hard facilities management services for five hospitals under a PFI contract at the Manchester Royal Infirmary – have successfully planned, managed, and co-ordinated, a complex electrical engineering project which saw high voltage (HV) switchgear in the site’s main intake sub-station dismantled by the supplier to repair a potential earthing mechanism fault which would have prevented individual switchgear panels being shut down, to, for example, cater for renovation of electrical cabling or components cross the site’s high voltage network.

Few beds, one would imagine, could withstand three-quarters of a ton landing on them, but this was the challenge successfully met by a box bed from a furniture manufacturer for challenging behaviour environments, Tough Furniture, when, to reassure a customer that the bed could accommodate 30-stone patients, 13 of the company’s staff jumped repeatedly on it to ensure that it would survive intact in a real-world setting. Such testing may seem extreme, but is vital, since much of the company’s furniture is destined for environments where patients will abuse, and indeed attempt to destroy, components.

Bioliquid is often overlooked by organisations when they look to reduce carbon emissions by moving heating or power generation away from fossil fuels to ‘renewables’.

As flooring specialist, Gerflor, marks over 60 years supplying the healthcare sector, Virginia Harris, the company’s Scottish sales and specification executive, takes a look at some of the recent trends in healthcare flooring, where attractive aesthetics, sustainability, a hard-wearing and robust construction, and cleaning and infection control considerations, are among the key criteria on specifiers’ lists. She also considers the crossover between design and new product development.

David Green, AIA, principal at the London offices of Perkins+Will, and Basak Alkan, AICP, LEED AP / healthcare district planner, at the architect, interior, and urban design company’s Atlanta, US base, examine growing moves in the US to re-evaluate planning policies to ensure that local environments are built that promote healthy activities, with the creation of so-called ‘Health Districts’.

The NHS is costing the taxpayer 2.5 times more than it did 50 years ago. Now accounting for 8.2 per cent of the UK’s GDP, this trend is set to continue, but funding is not in place to support it. The Government faces a struggle between what is needed and what is affordable, pointing to a complete re-think of the way care is delivered. So says Steve Peak, business development director for Vanguard Healthcare, As the 2015 General Election brings the issue into sharper focus, he examines how estates managers are responding to the pressures and the practicalities of delivering the infrastructure to support a new model of care.

With the Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012, which actually came into effect on 1 January 2014 in Scotland, requiring all the country’s healthcare facilities to separate their waste for recycling, waste management consultants, Jess Twemlow and Dr Adam Read of Ricardo-AEA, consider what healthcare facilities south of the border can learn from Scotland’s experience about improved waste management and resource efficiency.

Writing on behalf of the Building & Engineering Services Association (B&ES), Ewen Rose, an experienced journalist specialising in building engineering services, reports on a number of presentations at October’s IHEEM Healthcare Estates 2014 conference where the focus was very much on how healthcare estates and facilities and healthcare engineering teams can save energy and cut carbon emissions through more efficient monitoring, and, if necessary, subsequent adjustment, of key HVAC plant.

Mark Chapple BSc (Hons) IEng MIHEEM AMCIBSE examines the issue of engineering ethics, and asks ‘whether ethics is an alien word to the engineering profession?’

Despite having only established the company nine years ago, the founders of Kidderminster-based Avensys Medical believe the company now offers not only one of the UK’s most comprehensive maintenance, repair, consultancy, and equipment audit services for medical and dental equipment, but also one of the most tailored training portfolios for electro-biomedical (EBME) engineers working in healthcare settings to enable them to get the best out of such equipment, improve patient safety, optimise service life, and save both the NHS and private sector money.

The following examples illustrate how continuous dosing with SHP can be used successfully to resolve Legionella problems in healthcare and other facilities.These particular cases all utilised EndoSan.

Although temperature control has been the UK’s longest-serving means of controlling the growth and proliferation of Legionella in hot and cold water systems, there are other factors, including major rises in energy costs, that warrant the use of biocides – including in the healthcare sector.

Neil Ashdown, general manager of the Fire Door Inspection Scheme (FDIS), considers the key steps for ensuring that fire doors are correctly specified, installed, maintained, inspected, and, when necessary, repaired, to enable them to effectively fulfil their role.

A major design and build scheme which has seen the inpatient unit at St. Luke’s Hospice in Sheffield extended and refurbished to provide a more comfortable and homely environment, and bring the facilities up to the best 21st century standards, has benefited significantly from both high quality architecture and stakeholder commitment.

Mike Hilditch, managing director of auctioneers, Hilditch Group, which has extensive experience in selling equipment on behalf of the NHS, advises, via a seven-step guide, on some of the key elements for estates and facilities teams to consider to ensure that site clearances both go to plan and reap maximum financial reward, including safeguarding potentially valuable ‘kit’ against opportunist thieves, and preventing confidential paperwork falling into the wrong hands.