FEATURE ARTICLES

Refurbishments are becoming increasingly common across the NHS, but planning and delivering construction projects in live medical environments with the minimum of disruption to patients, staff, and visitors, is no mean feat, as Richard Hall, a director at integrated property services and project delivery specialist, Styles&Wood, explains.

Hospitals and healthcare facilities use a variety of heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) equipment for a wide range of applications. Here, in our latest technical guidance article, presented in a ‘Question and Answer’-type format, Adam Spolnik, director, and Richard Metcalfe, sales director, of temperature control specialist, ICS Cool Energy, focus on some of the key priorities, maintenance-wise, to get the optimum performance from chillers and HVAC components, and identify the units that perform best for particular healthcare applications.

Simon Corben, business development director at Capita Symonds’ Health team, examines how ‘clever use of zoning’ when planning new healthcare facilities could improve hospital design, increase inherent flexibility, and reduce lifetime costs, and argues that a ‘loose-fit, non-bespoke approach’ to space planning will lead to ‘more flexible buildings that are suitable for conversion to alternative uses’.

In March 2013, the Department of Health (DH), in partnership with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Department of Transport, produced an updated version of Health Technical Memorandum 07-01 (HTM 07-01), fully supported by the Environment Agency (EA), the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), and the devolved administrations.

HEJ reports on next month’s Healthcare Estates 2013 conference and exhibition in Manchester, focusing on some of the key topics set to be discussed throughout a packed two-day programme at this year’s flagship IHEEM annual event, and highlights some of the main show features.

According to Betts Envirometal, experts in precious metal recovery from waste streams, and a provider of ‘total waste management’ solutions, ‘disposing of hospital wastes isn’t usually a glamorous subject, unless, of course, you know how to make money from it’.

In a slightly adapted version of article first published in the IFHE (International Federation of Hospital Engineering) Digest 2012.

According to architect, Ana Maria Silva Mejia, ‘a new era for the design of hospitals in Guatemala has arrived’, with a considerable growth in interest around good healthcare facility design.

In June’s HEJ we reported on the first ‘half’ of a recent IHEEM roundtable held in Manchester in conjunction with an expert panel that included Department of Health representatives, and members of the working group that developed it, discussing the latest, ‘revised and updated’ NHS Premises Assurance Model.

In the latest of a series of technical guidance articles to be published in HEJ this year, Tom Welland, conformance and regulatory affairs manager at fire safety product and system specialist, Fireco.

While healthcare estates and facilities teams NHS-wide are acutely aware of the need to reduce their facilities’ carbon footprint, obtaining the necessary funding to undertake the substantial improvements to buildings, plant, and equipment, that may, in many cases, be essential to achieving this goal, will remain a challenge for many Trusts for some time to come.

Conference topics at the Design in Mental Health Conference & Exhibition 2013 at Birmingham’s National Motorcycle Museum in mid-May ranged from how to develop supportive design for dementia sufferers, to a new Dutch ‘High Care Unit’ pilot facility in Eindhoven incorporating multisensory elements from Philips Healthcare.

Susan Pearson BSc, a freelance journalist and communications consultant specialising in medicine and the environment (see also HEJ – April 2013), reports on discussions, at a recent educational seminar, on a pilot project undertaken by the Environmental Microbiology Unit at the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (BSUH) NHS Trust.

According to Alan Hambidge, who has over 22 years’ experience in health and safety risk management, and is an expert in legionellosis and water hygiene, ‘recent developments and research’ have resulted in ‘an increase in the Health and Safety Executive’s expectations’ on the standards adopted by healthcare organisations in looking after their water systems.

Dr Melvyn Langford C.Eng, MIMechE, MCIBSE, who worked in the NHS for nearly 40 years, including as an estates and facilities manager at several NHS Trusts, has written several previous HEJ articles on ‘systematic failures’ in the way maintenance of NHS healthcare buildings has been managed, and on what he claims is a ‘fundamental flaw’ within the national guidance for backlog maintenance (see HEJ – November 2009, September 2010, and September 2011).

The key steps that can be taken to minimise the risk of harmful waterborne bacteria such as Legionella and Pseudomonas proliferating widely through water systems in healthcare premises were discussed in detail during a recent two-day event staged by Delabie, one of Europe’s leading water control and sanitary equipment suppliers, at the company’s Friville headquarters in Picardy, northern France.

A wide selection of Altro flooring and wallcovering products have been used in the award-winning Ferndene Children and Young People’s Centre in Prudhoe, Northumberland, to create a healing environment that, according to the company, ‘is visually stunning, as well as safe, hard-wearing, and hygienic’.

Replacing a healthcare facility first opened in 1908 as a 20-bed cottage hospital, the recently opened ‘new’ Finchley Memorial Hospital in north-west London was designed by architects, Murphy Philipps, ‘to be at the heart of a health campus’, surrounded by green space for use by both the hospital itself, and the local community.

With considerable evidence that the quality of the building ‘space’ within which mentally unwell patients are cared for impacts significantly both on speed and degree of recovery, the Design in Mental Health Network (DIMHN) has been working with the BRE and leading product suppliers over the past 5-6 years to develop a ‘Better Bedroom’ for such patients.

In late January this year the Department of Health (DH) released a revised and updated version of its NHS Premises Assurance Model (NHS PAM), a software-based tool originally launched in 2010 to enable estates and facilities managers to more easily gauge the condition of their built assets, provide premises assurance to their management Boards, and assure commissioners that healthcare is being delivered in fit-for-purpose buildings.