FEATURE ARTICLES

With recent Association of British Insurers (ABI) fire loss figures reportedly showing “a picture of worsening public fire protection in the UK”, Tom Welland, fire services manager at fire safety consultancy Fireco, asks if, at a time of tough budgetary constraints, those responsible for fire safety in the health service are being encouraged to follow the principle of reducing risk to levels “as low as reasonably practicable” (ALARP)?

How the healthcare sector, and, in particular, the estates and facilities managers running healthcare facilities UK-wide, can “survive, strive and thrive” given an environment where real-term healthcare spending growth could fall below 1% over the next five years, was the main theme of the recent HefmA 2010 national conference in Harrogate.

Surgeons and clinical staff, theatre circulation and scrub personnel, and anaesthetists, as well as the estates and facilities team at Kent’s Maidstone Hospital, have worked with specialist supplier of integrated audio, video, and instrumentation systems for the operating room, Olympus Medical, to develop what is claimed is among the UK’s most advanced operating theatres yet built for laparoscopic and endoscopic surgery.

Undeterred by the current economic downturn, and determined to give its customers even better service and reduced order lead times via a more efficient manufacturing and distribution operation, Spirax Sarco, one of the UK’s leading steam engineering specialists, is investing £25 million in its Cheltenham manufacturing operations in a move which it explains will bring together onto one enlarged site its entire production, distribution, and R&D activities. Jonathan Baillie reports

Construction of the new 513-bed PFI-funded hospital in Pembury near Tunbridge Wells in Kent, a £227 million acute healthcare facility that, on its completion in the autumn of 2011, will be the UK’s first to offer 100% single-bed en suite accommodation, is ahead of schedule, “thanks to excellent teamwork and careful planning”.

Bruce Johnson, senior vice-president at the Houston, Texas offices of internationally-recognised HKS Architects, examines the considerable physical challenge of accommodating sizeable proton external beam radiation therapy equipment into hospitals, drawing on work undertaken by the practice to date in designing hospitals to cater for such sizeable machinery.

Minutes of the 43rd Annual General Meeting, held at the Royal Academy of Engineering, London, on Tuesday 11 May, 2010.

One of the key priorities identified by new IHEEM President Paul Kingsmore as the Institute goes forward is a more open approach to communicating with members. Very much in this vein, last month’s IHEEM AGM saw the chairmen of several key Institute committees report on some of their particular committees’ key achievements and activities over the previous 12 months. HEJ reports.

Secure and reliable power is critical for any hospital or healthcare building. However, according to global energy management specialist Schneider Electric, with the closure of electrical generation and nuclear plants becoming a real threat, there will be a reduction in the spare capacity of energy.

Richard Norman, managing director of ventilation system cleaning specialist Indepth Hygiene, discusses the importance of ensuring that such systems are properly cleaned in healthcare facilities, especially, he argues, as dust and debris on internal surfaces of ducting are potentially “ideal nutrients” for the growth of microorganisms such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile.

With the NHS generating around 18 million tonnes of carbon and CO2 annually, estates personnel face a considerable challenge in meeting tough Government and EU energy reduction targets while maintaining patient safety/comfort amid predictions of, for instance, hotter summers.

Work has just been completed on a multi-million pound development at a Derbyshire hospital to provide a state-of-the-art facility for elderly mental health patients.

Some of the measures that EFM personnel can take to further reduce their estates’ carbon footprint at a time when pressure to cut energy consumption must be balanced both against the requirement to create the best possible patient environment, and new medical technology that may require substantial energy to operate, were the focus of a recent IHEEM carbon reduction seminar in London.

Being as “visible” as possible, both within the Institute itself, and to influential outside organisations and individuals such as politicians and senior civil servants, strengthening IHEEM’s role as a trusted provider of expert advice on healthcare estate management and engineering issues, and further raising the Institute’s profile and its overall “appeal” to potential new members, will be high on the list of priorities for IHEEM’s new President, Paul Kingsmore, he told HEJ’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, during a recent face-to-face discussion in London.

Working in a tight three-sided courtyard location within two metres of existing walls, while minimising noise, dust, and other disturbance which could have affected the recuperation of neurological patients housed in adjoining wards, and simultaneously co-ordinating its work with that of another contractor undertaking a separate, major building project extremely close by, were among the challenges successfully met by MTX Contracts during its recent completion of a new, modular three-storey extension to The Walton Centre in Liverpool.

In a paper that won the “Best Paper” award at the Institute of Hospital Engineering Australia’s (IHEA) 2009 conference in Queensland, Ken Liddell, MIHEA, of the Facility Coordination Unit at NSW (New South Wales) Health, draws on his own experience to consider some of the challenges,

Phil Giles of Becker Pumps Australia examines the use of variable frequency drives for medical suction plant, and explains the many potential benefits – both practical and economic.

Among the many challenges the NHS currently faces is an urgent need to cut its burgeoning energy costs and, in specialist building management system manufacturer Trend Control Systems’ words, its “massive carbon footprint”.

Jonathan Jones, European product manager at Tyco Thermal Controls, explains the economic and other benefits of using electrically trace-heated single pipe distribution, in place of the more “traditional” flow and return system, for hot water supply.

According to Professor Sanaz Litkouhi, Ph.D, an assistant professor of architecture at the Payam-Noor University of Tehran, the general lack of emphasis on providing suitable activity facilities in children’s hospitals affects both recovering child patients’ state of mind and the overall healing process.