FEATURE ARTICLES

With surgical advances seeing hospitals and other healthcare facilities now undertaking an ever wide range of procedures, increasing emphasis is now being placed on the quality of the lighting installed in operating theatres, where ‘older’ technologies like halogen and xenon gas discharge are increasingly being superseded by LED.

The contribution made by individual healthcare estates and engineering personnel both to the specialist field, and to helping to educate, develop, and encourage, their peers and colleagues, was recognised in style during November’s Healthcare Estates event in Manchester.

How the lessons learned from a concerted Marks & Spencer sustainability drive that was established, and subsequently enthusiastically championed by, the retailer’s then CEO and chairman, Sir Stuart Rose, could be translated to an NHS under fierce pressure to cut its own carbon footprint, was the subject of a morning keynote session at November’s Healthcare Estates 2011 conference in Manchester.

IHEEM’s President, Paul Kingsmore, took the opportunity of his keynote address at November’s Healthcare Estates conference in Manchester to highlight some of the key changes in healthcare commissioning and delivery expected to result from the radical proposals set out in the Health and Social Care Bill, and to give his personal viewpoint on the implications for UK healthcare engineering and estate management personnel.

Healthcare technology specialist, The Wandsworth Group, has been awarded a contract worth over £1 million to design, manufacture, and install the state-of-the art nurse call system for the £430 million Bristol Southmead Hospital PFI scheme.

Many HEJ readers will first see this issue as they pick up a copy at Healthcare Estates 2011, IHEEM’s flagship conference and exhibition in Manchester.

According to AECOM, the provider of professional technical and management support services, there is now a growing desire among developers and regulators to see CEEQUAL, an environmental assessment methodology historically applied to civil engineering projects such as roads, bridges, and water treatment works, applied to all civil engineering projects, to improve and measure sustainability.

Tony Roger, project manager at building services contractor, Shepherd Engineering Services (SES), describes the successful delivery of the £30 million New Oncology Expansion project at The James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough.

Grant Macdonald, managing director at supplier of mechanical and electronic door locks, Codelocks, examines some of the important issues for healthcare estates and facilities personnel considering how best to protect parts of a healthcare facility – large or small – given the need to minimise costs and not “over-specify” on security, while simultaneously ensuring that patients, staff, and hospital property, are safeguarded.

Daniela Sorana, an Italian architect, and the holder of a PhD in architecture technology, argues that, with university hospitals playing an increasing role in the development of innovative clinical practice and biomedical innovation.

According to international heating system manufacturer, Viessmann, it is not only new construction projects that can benefit from renewable heating systems.

José Canga Rodríguez, key account manager, Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences, EnviroChemie, and Volker Luh, CEO of EnviroDTS, describe the development, and recent successful application, of a new technology for dealing safely and effectively with the radioactive “wastewater” generated by patients who have undergone radiotherapy in nuclear medicine facilities.

UK architecture firm, BMJ Architects, is well-known as a specialist in healthcare work, completing projects all over the UK – from whole hospital campuses to cancer care centres.

Colin Dobbyne, director of OR1, describes OR Networks’ recent installation of a sophisticated new video communication and patient entertainment system in the intensive care unit at London’s St Mary’s Hospital, explaining how the “world first” equipment was designed and manufactured to meet the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust’s specific requirements.

With around a half of all construction projects over budget or missing their completion date, (according to Construction Statistics Annual, 2009, Office of Public Sector Information), David Jupp, business development manager at Elliott Off-Site Building Solutions, looks at why an off-site solution was chosen for the new West of England Multiple Sclerosis Centre in Bradley Stoke, North Bristol. A

How the NHS can transform itself into a healthcare system equipped to meet current and future challenges – an ageing population, patients demanding an equal say with doctors on their treatment, a shift towards more care provision at home, and the radical plans proposed for GP commissioning consortia in the Health and Social Care Bill.

Health Estate Journal reports on the design and construction of the UK’s first dedicated transplantation centre, at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital, considering some of the complex practical, adjacency, structural, and aesthetic challenges the project team had to overcome to create a facility designed to provide both leading edge medical training and research facilities, and a light, spacious, and uplifting patient and staff environment.

Stuart Watkin BEng (Hons) MSc CEng MIHEEM, head of Engineering Compliance & Energy at North Tees & Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust, reports on a recent six-month trial, at the Trust’s University Hospital of North Tees, of a new saline-based disinfection system for combating Legionella.

DuPont claims that electrical arc, and the resulting “arc flash”, are among the deadliest, least understood hazards of electricity”, and can potentially occur in many industrial and other applications, including hospital plant rooms.

Lorie Shekter-Wolfson, assistant vice-president, Waterfront, and Dean of Community Services and Health Sciences, at George Brown College in Toronto, describes the construction of a new waterfront campus for the College, where the aim is to provide a learning facility “flexible enough to evolve and shape future healthcare delivery models and assist collaborative learning”.