FEATURE ARTICLES

Agreeing to spend £88,000 to sign her Trust up to a new online guide that will provide information on disabled access provision for some individual 300 healthcare sites throughout the county was “an extremely easy decision”, NHS Suffolk chief executive Carole Taylor-Brown told a London audience recently.

Static Systems Group, a specialist in the design, supply, installation and maintenance of bedhead services and advanced communication systems, looks back at how nurse call systems and bedhead services trunking systems have developed to meet evolving healthcare and hospital trends.

Simon Keel, product executive at air-conditioning equipment specialist Daikin UK, discusses climate control solutions for the hospital environment as a raft of environmental legislation, and the need to cut both costs and emissions, hit home.

Simon Keel, product executive at air-conditioning equipment specialist Daikin UK, discusses climate control solutions for the hospital environment as a raft of environmental legislation, and the need to cut both costs and emissions, hit home.

English Health Technical Memoranda and Health Building Notes will from now on be accessible in comprehensive online form following the decision by the national estates directorates in all four UK countries to migrate these key sources of technical information and guidance to a new website over the next six months.

Morgan Ashurst has completed construction of the Kentish Town Health Centre in London in a project that the construction company says “sets standards for the NHS by serving as a community hub for wellness, instead of illness”. Health Estate Journal reports on a building whose function is said to “extend far beyond simply treating sick people”.

John Davies, operations manager of multi-disciplinary mechanical and electrical and construction contractor cfes, describes a “turnkey” project that the company is undertaking for the Yeovil District Hospital (YDH) NHS Foundation Trust, involving both the design and construction of a new sterile services department, and substantial input into the facility’s subsequent operation and management.

Late last year the Engineering Council UK, which holds the national registers of Chartered Engineers, Incorporated Engineers, Engineering Technicians, and Information and Communication Technology Technicians, dropped the “UK” from its name to reflect its growing international focus.

The considerable contributions made by estates and facilities personnel to maintaining the essential services that keep UK healthcare facilities running, and to providing a high quality care and treatment environment, alongside their efforts in promoting the sector more widely and helping fellow professionals advance their career, were recognised at the IHEEM Annual Dinner at the recent Healthcare Estates event.

An overview of how the new Care Quality Commission will monitor standards from one of the new regulatory body’s regional directors, who echoed the words of a US stateswoman in exhorting delegates to “never waste a good crisis”, together with contrasting perspectives on some of the most pressing issues facing estates and facilities personnel in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, formed the keynote speeches at 2009’s Healthcare Estates conference. Jonathan Baillie reports.

Eighty entries from students from schools of architecture and interior design all over the world were whittled down to just eight in the 2009 Architects for Health (AfH) Student Health Awards.

A specialist in X-ray equipment, who spent over 30 years working for X-ray system manufacturers, IHEEM North Western branch member Keith Feay subsequently established his own consultancy.

Over the past year the estates and facilities team at London’s UCLH NHS Foundation Trust and Interserve Consulting have jointly analysed energy consumption at University College Hospital to identify saving opportunities and potential carbon footprint reduction measures.

With estates and facilities “very much in fashion” given that patients now increasingly put cleanliness and the “general environment” at the top of their agenda, estates personnel now have an opportunity to be “right at the heart of healthcare”, said Health Facilities Scotland (HFS) director Paul Kingsmore, keynote speaker at the recent 2009 Healthcare Facilities Consortium conference in Oxford.

Melvyn Langford, a former NHS estates and facilities manager with a number of Trusts and now an independent risk management consultant, describes the development and subsequent application of a model designed to help NHS Trusts, including their estates and facilities functions, to identify, monitor and manage key risks which, if not addressed, could impact on business continuity and patient care.

Four of the individuals behind an unusual Dutch project to bring together, under one overall “umbrella”, a range of integrated healthcare, social care, educational and leisure facilities within a multicultural, multi-activity centre located in one of Amsterdam’s most socially diverse “problem” districts, describe how the project evolved, and its ambitious short- and long-term goals

In this adapted version of an article from The Australian Hospital Engineer, Kim Bruton, MIHEA, the magazine’s editor, and chief engineer at the Wodonga Hospital campus of the newly-formed Albury Wodonga Health Service in Victoria, Australia, describes a project to both analyse the impact of regular maintenance on plant performance, and significantly reduce energy consumption across the hospital estate in the future.

The new Bristol Heart Institute (BHI), part of University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust (UH Bristol), and one of a number of specialist regional cardiology and cardiac surgery centres built in England over the past decade in line with Department of Health regional cardiac provision strategy, opened to its first patients in May.

Italy is well-known for its creative flair and contemporary design, but does this creativity translate to the healthcare sector? Having recently visited several Italian hospitals, Danny Gibson, technical director at international healthcare consultancy MJ Medical, contrasts the Italian healthcare system’s use of equipment and technology with the UK approach, considers Italian hospital planners’ attitude to future-proofing their buildings, and asks what lessons, if any, the UK can learn.

Ken Dickinson, operations manager for NG Bailey, M&E contractor for the new St Helens and Whiston Hospitals in Merseyside (pictured), describes how off-site construction of a high proportion of the electrical and services modules required for the two new hospitals benefited the overall construction process, while simultaneously reducing safety risk, paring waste, cutting the number of deliveries to site, and improving the quality and consistency of electrical and mechanical fittings.