RECENT FEATURE ARTICLES
Using Travel Plans to cut costs and parking problems
Hospitals regularly suffer with high numbers of cars arriving at site, with their drivers wanting to use onsite parking, resulting in a higher demand for car parking spaces than is actually available. Here Simon Bourke, Healthcare Sector lead for global professional services firm, RPS Group, looks at the key considerations, and at some of the key steps in developing an effective Travel Plan, with a focus on the positive outcomes resulting from doing this at two large acute NHS Trusts.- Feature
Managing washrooms efficiently and safely
Paul Musgrove, UK Development manager at shower room and washroom specialist, Conti+ UK, discusses some of the many and varied considerations and priorities for estates and facilities teams managing healthcare washroom systems, and outlines some of the recent advances in the field from the company.- Feature
Inspire individuals to ‘discover their possibilities’
Becky Hill, an applied biology and microbiology research scientist who ‘transitioned into the corporate world’ – developing her knowledge skills and expertise in water treatment and purification – before founding performance improvement and strategic advisor company, Solutions 42, outlines her ‘holistic approach and measurable solutions to learning and development interventions in healthcare’.- Feature
People flow analysis used for Norwich research facility
The Quadram Institute in Norwich is, the facility’s creators say, ‘an exceptional interdisciplinary facility dedicated to food science, gut biology, and health’. Richard Walder, Sector director of Science and Technology (UK) at BuroHappold Engineering, and Nora Claudio Familiar, Project architect at NBBJ, outline the challenges of housing three complex organisations under one roof, and explain how collaboration enabled the project to succeed.- Feature
Training provider celebrates its half-century
For Eastwood Park, 2019 is more significant than most. This year the long-established training centre celebrates 50 years of delivering specialist engineering, decontamination, and estates and facilities management training. Helen Cornes, senior marketing executive at the Gloucestershire training facility, looks back at its development, and at how its course portfolio has both adapted and expanded over the years, in line with the significant changes in the sector.- Feature
Guernsey hospitals praise monitoring system
Working with UK thermometer manufacturer, TM Electronics UK, hospital estate managers in the States of Guernsey are using ‘practical, low cost temperature strategies’ to speed up and simplify water temperature monitoring across their healthcare estate, as well as to ensure that their hospitals’ water systems comply with the demanding requirements of the Department of Health & Social Care’s HTM 04-01 and the HSE’s ACoP ‘L8’ guidance on the control of Legionella in water systems.- Feature
Skirtless UCV canopy for complete theatre refit
Peter Bellis, managing director of Lancashire-based building services consulting engineers, A P Bellis & Associates, discusses the challenges of a complete refurbishment and refit of of one of the operating theatres at Westmorland General Hospital in Kendal in Cumbria.- Feature
Bringing proton beam therapy to the UK patients
In September’s HEJ, the architectural practice that designed the Rutherford Cancer Centre North East in Northumberland, JDDK Architects, discussed some of the key thinking behind the facility’s creation.- Feature
Better feedback for improved outcomes
Colin Dobbyne MIET, an experienced product designer, and the founder of Big Blue Solutions, says he is ‘passionate about empowering clinicians to make better decisions by connecting operating theatres to create a constant feedback loop for research and development’.- Feature
Reducing noise in today’s intensive care units
Four Master’s students in Mechanical/Electronic Engineering at the University of Portsmouth have recently undertaken a project looking at ‘excessively high’ noise levels in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). Here they report on the findings of their research – which included surveying the public – and highlight a number of potential active and passive control measures to take to make such environments quieter and more ‘calming’.- Feature
Access to a new, diverse, and talented workforce
Mark Jackson, deputy director of Estates, Facilities and IT at The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, considers the key benefits he has seen from his experience of implementing DFN Project SEARCH’s innovative training programme across three different Trusts.- Feature
Safeguarding people and protecting products
Effective environmental monitoring of ambient spaces housing everything from a catering operation to wards is key for safe, appropriate conditions in hospitals and other healthcare facilities.- Feature
Well-trained staff support good practice
A look at some of the key considerations in ensuring safe preparation and delivery of healthy food to hospital patients.- Feature
Getting the most from an adaptable, versatile medium
Steam continues to play an important role in serving the requirements of modern healthcare facilities. Angelo Giambrone, Business Development manager at Spirax Sarco UK, discusses the influence of this versatile medium on our day-to-day living, and explains why the healthcare sector should continue to embrace steam as an integral component of a 21st-century hospital.- Feature
Air quality management – part of an ‘holistic approach’
Washroom services provider, Simply Washrooms, discusses how factors including insufficient hand hygiene, difficult-to-clean surfaces, and poor air quality, can lead to the proliferation of harmful bacteria in hospitals and other healthcare facilities.- Feature
Business cases must be robust and well-conceived
Conor Ellis, head of Healthcare at Rider Levett Bucknall, discusses the need for robust business cases in winning a share of the dwindling capital ‘pot’ for financing new healthcare schemes.- Feature
Advanced 4K theatre design at new Papworth Hospital
In early May this year the new Royal Papworth Hospital opened to patients on its new site on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. A look at the delivery and implementation of a 4K audio-visual system for the new healthcare facility’s state-of-the-art operating theatres.- Feature
Design employing a more compassionate architecture
The ageing of the population has highlighted the need for inclusive, enabling societies. Dr Evangelia Chrysikou, a lecturer and the Programme director of the new MSc Healthcare Facilities course at the Bartlett Real Estate Institute, UCL, in London, says considerably more thought must also be given to making the built environment more ‘inclusive’.- Feature
Matching power protection to system requirements
Designing power protection components – uninterruptible power systems (UPS), emergency lighting inverters, generators, and isolated power supplies – into a hospital or other healthcare facility’s electrical distribution system can be challenging.- Feature
How to deal with the ageing UK NHS infrastructure
A specialist in energy and carbon reduction, infrastructure renewal, operating cost savings, and improved building environments, argues for ‘a logical, pragmatic approach’ in addressing an ageing estate and an increasing critical backlog.- Feature
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