FEATURE ARTICLES

Callum MacInnes BSc (Hons), AIFireE, an engineer at WSP UK – part of a global design engineering and management consultancy group specialising in property, transport and infrastructure, industry and environment projects – and his colleague, senior engineer, Richard Rankin CEng MEng (Hons) MIFireE, discuss the importance of passive fire protection in healthcare premises.

With an increasing number of NHS Trusts and Health Boards now incorporating single-bed en suite patient bedroom design into their hospitals, but with the protagonists and opponents no nearer to settling their differences on this form of accommodation, a presentation at this NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership Facilities Services (formerly Welsh Health Estates) conference in Cardiff on the experiences of staff, patients, and visitors, at Wales’s first 100% single-bed hospital, the Ysbyty Aneurin Bevan in Ebbw Vale, based on analysis and feedback from its first year in operation, provided some interesting data and conclusions.

The recent Ecobuild 2012 conference and exhibition in London focused on the key environmental issues and challenges for the UK construction, estates and facilities, and architectural sectors, as well as on the ever-broadening choice of ‘green solutions’ available from suppliers of everything from solar panelling to reed-based dwellings.

Many larger hospitals are sprawling complexes with endless corridors and rooms of varying purpose. While cleanliness and infection control are, understandably, leading considerations in any hospital building, fire safety also plays a crucial role.

With more and more care expected to be delivered from community settings and in patients’ homes in coming years, Ian Jackson, MD at specialist IT service provider, Imerja, considers how technologies like telemedicine, remote diagnostics, and videoconferencing, and even pills fitted with microchips and antennae to alert medics remotely when the patient swallows them, could potentially transform healthcare in the future.

Against a backdrop where the Coalition Government has said more ‘value’ needs to be squeezed out of existing healthcare PFI projects, Karen Prosser, head of the health sector team at built asset consultancy, EC Harris, and Russell Gates, one of the company’s partners on the same team, set out some of the key elements that NHS Trusts with operational PFI contracts should consider when undertaking a contract savings review.

Ken Marriott, an independent acoustics consultant with Industrial Commercial & Technical Consultants (ICTC), outlines some of the key acoustics considerations for those planning new hospital build or refurbishment schemes, cautioning that, all too often, this important area is not properly considered at a sufficiently early project stage.

Allan Kelly, facilities director at Guelph General Hospital in Ontario, Canada, and chairman of the Ontario Chapter of the Canadian Healthcare Engineering Society (CHES), describes how an independent water conservation assessment undertaken at the healthcare facility, and the subsequent remedial measures taken, resulted in substantial savings – both in reduced water consumption, and lower costs.

Health Estate Journal’s November 2010 issue included a fascinating personal account by Alan Bavis, facilities and engineering manager at New Zealand’s Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB), of how he and his team kept essential hospital services going in Christchurch after an earthquake measuring 7.1 magnitude on the Richter Scale hit the country’s South Island on 4 September that year.

IHEEM’s recent seminar in Birmingham, ‘Dirty Little Secrets’, not only focused on the key priorities for keeping surgical instruments clean and sterile (HEJ – April 2012), but also featured a timely presentation by Dr Jimmy Walker, principal investigator, Decontamination, HPA Microbiology Services, at the Health Protection Agency, in which the highly experienced microbiologist shared his expertise on what appears to be becoming an increasingly prevalent problem for healthcare estates and engineering personnel.

Europe’s newest hospital, and the UK’s largest ever PPP-funded and operated healthcare facility – the £650 million Royal London in Whitechapel – opened its doors on 1 March – following years of hard work and planning which has seen doctors and nurses involved throughout, working under the guidance of a 30-strong Barts and the London NHS Trust New Hospitals Programme team to create an optimal healing environment.

The 15th Annual Conference and Exhibition to be hosted by the Health Estates and Facilities Management Association (HefmA), this year themed ‘Strong Foundations or Shifting Sands?’, takes places later this month (24-25 May) in Telforda

Tabloid sensationalism aside, the increase in attacks on health service workers has led to many hospitals and healthcare facilities re-assessing their security systems.

According to many published studies, ‘ducting in ventilation and air-conditioning are largely overlooked and ignored, as they are out of sight and out of mind’, despite mounting evidence indicating a higher risk in spreading airborne infections’.1-6

A ‘bury your head in the sand’ approach to resilience planning is simply not an option for today’s healthcare estates managers, according to Billy Durie, contingency planning sector manager at Aggreko, a global specialist in temporary power and temperature control solutions.

IP systems expert, Terry Boarer, from healthcare technology specialist, Wandsworth Group, explains the capabilities of IP-based technology, what that means for the healthcare sector, and what health estates managers should consider when reviewing IP-based nurse call systems for specification.

One of the most complex multi-phase construction projects I have ever worked on’, is how main contractor Mansell’s Neil Rowlands, project manager on a £17 million project to re-build and extend the Accident & Emergency Department and Fracture Clinic at Essex’s busy Basildon University Hospital, describes the now almost completed ProCure21 scheme.

Steve Kearney, business manager for Newey & Eyre – Energy Saving 24/7, a team of ‘energy experts’ established early last year within one of the UK’s leading distributors of electrical supplies, discusses the technologies and simple measures now available to reduce emissions and cut wastage generated by lighting in healthcare facilities, at a time when the NHS, especially, is under increasing pressure to reduce its carbon footprint.

Established in 2004 by three ambitious individuals at the time involved in supplying windows and building plastics to the trade, Britplas Commercial has doubled its turnover year-on-year over the past three years, largely thanks to the success of its patented anti-ligature window, the Safevent, which it initially designed specifically for the Mersey Care NHS Trust’s new multi-million pound low secure mental health unit at Liverpool’s Rathbone Hospital.

‘Dirty Little Secrets’ was the title of a well-attended IHEEM seminar held in Birmingham in mid-February which considered some of the key challenges and obligations for those in hospitals and other healthcare facilities responsible for keeping surgical instruments clean, sterile, and fit-for-purpose, and, in the process, minimising risk of injury or surgical site infection to patients undergoing a wide range of procedures. HEJ editor Jonathan Baillie reports.