FEATURE ARTICLES

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”.

At last November’s 21st IFHE Congress in Tokyo, Israeli architect Arad Sharon described how he and his partner at Tel Aviv-based Sharon Architects, Sharon Gur-Ze’ev, had designed a new children’s hospital on Haifa’s Rambam Health Care campus, one of Israel’s best-known healthcare sites, and already home both to the region’s largest medical centre, and a Level 1 Trauma Centre that treats both civilian and military patients.

During a recent whistle-stop trip to England, International Federation of Hospital Engineering (IFHE) President, Professor Yasushi Nagasawa, and a delegation of Japanese student architects and engineers, managed not only to tour of a number of London’s leading healthcare facilities, and a renewable energy facility at London’s South Bank University – where the Professor had earlier trained.

Like other communications technology, nurse call systems have evolved considerably over the past 10-15 years, and now offer far more than just their primary function.

Over the next few years the NHS is set to undergo its most significant changes in generations. Peter Wilkinson, a partner at Drivers Jonas Deloitte, who leads the company’s regional Construction Advisory practice and national public sector business, explores what this might mean for the NHS estate.

Peter Hill, associate director and solicitor at specialist law firm TPP Law, considers the potential impact on estate management of the substantial reforms proposed for the NHS under last Year’s White Paper, “Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS”.

An ongoing upgrading of clinical handwashing facilities at its hospitals by NHS Lanarkshire is seeing the Scottish Health Board replace, in many cases, ageing basins and taps subject to Healthcare Environment Inspectorate (HEI) criticism, with standardised modules comprising a clinical basin, Horne Engineering’s Optitherm thermostatic tap, and soap and towel dispensers, all mounted on a single integrated panel structure.

Sue Frith, deputy head of the NHS Security Management Service (NHS SMS), explains the organisation’s important role in advising, and supporting, security staff at NHS hospitals in dealing with incidents ranging from verbal abuse to serious violence and aggression.

A close-knit team of eight senior personnel with backgrounds in mental healthcare have collaborated to develop a new High Secure Building Design Guide for England’s three high secure mental health hospitals – Ashworth, Broadmoor, and Rampton.