FEATURE ARTICLES

Susan Witterick, director of Acoustics and Air Quality at Capita Symonds, examines the important role of acoustics in healthcare facility design in the “Age of Austerity”, warning that, despite being a key factor in creating an optimal hospital environment for patients, staff, and visitors, it is too often still viewed as “a poor cousin at the design team table”.

Conor Ellis, global account leader, Health; Ed Baldwin, partner, and Dr Rachel Dick, consultant, at international built asset consultancy, EC Harris, provide an updated assessment on the current NHS estate, and, in the wake of the publication of an earlier detailed paper on the subject in late 2010.

With the NHS aiming to reduce its 2007 carbon footprint by 10% by 2015, Chris Horsley, managing director of Babcock Wanson UK, a provider of industrial boilers and burners, thermal oxidisers, air treatment, water treatment, and associated services, looks at how one NHS Trust has approached the challenge, and considerably reduced its carbon emissions, by refurbishing its boiler house and moving from oil to gas-fired steam generation.

Creating a new hospital that proves itself to be sustainable on a greenfield site is quite a challenge. Paul Bell, director at Ryder Architecture, describes how the St Andrews Community Hospital and Health Centre has been delivered to achieve just that for NHS Fife.

An independent survey into hospital food standards in England conducted earlier this year for the Soil Association saw over half of those patients surveyed admit they would not be happy serving the meals they received during a recent hospital stay to a child, while 29% said the food was so bad that, at times, they could not recognise what was on their plate.

Simon England, director at Accenture Health UK, outlines the benefits of an “assessment-based” approach to creating “smarter” healthcare buildings with reduced running costs and a lower carbon footprint.

Government plans for NHS reforms will have a direct impact on the specification of security products within hospitals, surgeries, and care facilities, argues Tina Hughan, head of marketing for ASSA ABLOY, who considers the likely ramifications, and how security products must adapt to accommodate these changes.

At a recent seminar in London, “Sustainability and the environment in the real world”, speakers from multinational flooring specialist, Tarkett, and major users of the company’s floorcoverings, examined how specifier, customer, consumer, and regulatory demands for more “sustainable” flooring systems are impacting on this important product sector.

At a recent seminar in London, “Sustainability and the environment in the real world”, speakers from multinational flooring specialist, Tarkett, and major users of the company’s floorcoverings, examined how specifier, customer, consumer, and regulatory demands for more “sustainable” flooring systems are impacting on this important product sector.

Steve Ruddell, head of global marketing, Motors & Generators, at ABB, emphasises the importance of a good motor management and maintenance policy in getting the best performance from, and reducing the energy consumption of, hospitals’ HVAC systems.

Speaking at the Health Estates and Facilities Management Association’s (HEFMA) 2011 national conference in Torquay, Mike Hall, general manager, facilities, at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, explained how, with estates and facilities departments expected to significantly contribute to the £20 billion in savings the NHS must achieve over the next 3-4 years.

In a previous article, in the September 2010 edition of Health Estate Journal, “Is multi-million pound backlog a reality”, independent consultant to the healthcare sector, Dr Melvyn Langford, highlighted what he claimed was a “fundamental flaw” in the way the established NHS “5 x 5 criticality grid” used to assess the urgency of backlog maintenance had been interpreted for many years by estates personnel, resulting, he said, in one Trust with a reported £12 million backlog in fact only having a £0.5 m “backlog issue”.

Claire Bradford, project director at SHAPE (the Strategic Health Asset Planning and Evaluation iniatitive), outlines the many benefits available to estates and facilities teams via the web-enabled, evidence-based application.

Paul Boocock, director of estates and facilities management at the South Devon Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, explains how he and Jonathan Gilmore, a director at not-for-profit healthcare sector improvement organisation, BIRCH, and the Collaborative Working Centre.

Paul Boocock, director of estates and facilities management at the South Devon Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, explains how he and Jonathan Gilmore, a director at not-for-profit healthcare sector improvement organisation, BIRCH, and the Collaborative Working Centre, with wide-ranging experience in the construction and EFM sectors.

Global provider of professional technical and management support services to the transportation, facilities, environmental, energy, water, and government sectors, AECOM, describes how it is providing a package of advanced civil and structural engineering design solutions to the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust as the Trust undertakes a major infrastructure upgrade at its St James’s University Hospital and Leeds General Infirmary (LGI) sites.

As one of the UK’s largest public sector carbon emitters, the NHS is under particularly strong pressure to deliver action to reduce its CO2 emissions and meet Government targets, while joining other public sector organisations in leading the vanguard against climate change.

Operations manager, Ashley Heming, and area sales manager, Andy Cassie, of specialist cleaning and cleaning services company, CK Group, explain how a close 15-year relationship with Kent’s Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust is continuing, with the firm having recently undertaken a thorough preoccupation clean at the new 513-bed PFI-funded Pembury Hospital, one of the UK’s first acute hospitals to offer 100% single-bed en suite accommodation, before its first patients moved in.

Duty-bound under contracts with partner NHS PCTs, independent primary care contractors, and other community stakeholders who lease healthcare premises from it, to ensure that the buildings’ energy systems and plant run efficiently and cost-effectively, Community Solutions, a leading investor in, and developer of, UK community-based health, social, and local authority services.

While the “traditional” way to measure Legionella quantitatively in water is based on a complex culture method where results can take up to 14 days, the last few years have seen the availability of very rapid real-time monitoring of the bacterium in water systems, with the development of quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR), a process which gives results “within hours”.