RECENT NEWS

The Duchess of Cornwall last month dedicated the new home of defence medical training, Defence Medical Services (Whittington) near Lichfield in Staffordshire, marking the completion of a major building project.

A Brookfield Multiplex-led consortium has been named preferred bidder to build the proposed new Royal Hospital for Sick Children and Department of Clinical Neurosciences in Edinburgh.

Skills and Enterprise Minister Matthew Hancock has announced a £30 million fund to increase the supply of engineers, to encourage more women into the sector, and to address engineering skills shortages in smaller companies. The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) says the fund will enable engineering companies to establish training programmes to develop future engineers, and boost the number of women in the profession.

Following the success of the first ‘Better Bedroom’, a full-scale ‘mock-up’ of an inpatient mental healthcare bedroom that opened in Warrington in October 2012 to enable those planning, designing, building, and managing such accommodation to see some of the latest technologies, fixtures, and fittings designed to enhance such environments in a realistic setting (HEJ – October 2012 and June 2013).

With only 7% of the UK engineering workforce women, the UK having Europe’s lowest percentage of female engineering professionals (at under 10%), just 3-4% of engineering and manufacturing apprenticeships female, and (according to the National Apprenticeship Service and Unionlearn), ‘gender stereotyping dissuading young women from pursing careers in traditionally male industries’.

A recent meeting of IHEEM’s London Branch saw Matthew Day, BEng (Hons) CEng MCIBSE FIHEEM MIMechE, regional partner at Harrogate-based consulting engineers, DSSR, present on new isolation rooms designed as part of the new wards and ICCU block at Sunderland Royal Infirmary.

The Institute has appealed for volunteers to assist with the registration process for Chartered Engineers, Incorporated Engineers, and Engineering Technicians. It is looking for Mentors, Reviewers, and Interviewers (see panel).

The theme for this year’s Healthcare Estates conference is ‘Quality in the Patient Environment’, reflecting the key issue of patient care, and the impact that estates and facilities departments can have on this.

Crofton, the consulting engineer, has completed the refurbishment of the 14-bed Wolfson Ward, which caters for patients living with Huntington’s disease at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability in London’s Putney. The £400,000 contract saw the company provide both M&E and structural solutions to refurbish the main occupational therapy room and common areas, enabling better care for the ward’s live-in residents. The architects were IBI Nightingale Associates.

Eric Wright Facilities Management (EWFM), a division of the Eric Wright Group, has appointed Andrij Korolczuk as operations director, following the retirement of his predecessor, Allan Mazey.

Assa Abloy says its ‘robust’ timber doorsets have helped to reduce maintenance and replacement expenditure at Lancashire’s Royal Blackburn Hospital, delivering ‘best value’ over the installation’s lifetime.

New child safety standards for internal window blinds in homes, public buildings, and commercial premises, have been welcomed by the British Blind and Shutter Association (BBSA), which says they are a result of its continued campaigning.

A Turbidity Monitoring System for detecting non-conductive contaminants such as fats, oils, and greases, in condensate, enabling steam system operators ‘to recover substantial amounts of energy that would otherwise be lost’, has been launched by Spirax Sarco.

Grundon Waste Management has acquired Arundelle, a specialist industrial services and cleaning company, in a deal Grundon says will enable it to expand its services into key areas such as confined spaces cleaning, decontamination, site decommissioning, pollution control, scheduled inspection and maintenance, and Hazpack /Hazmat spill response.

Codelocks is offering NHS estates and facilities managers the opportunity to attend a free digital lock training course to help them improve access control within healthcare buildings.

A new health facility for Barrow is now closer following Cumbria County Council’s sale of the former Alfred Barrow School site to eLIFT Cumbria.

MD of specialist ventilation cleaning services provider, InDepth Hygiene, Richard Norman, has been appointed chairman of the Building and Engineering Services Association’s (B&ES) Ventilation Hygiene branch.

Dalkia has supplied the St-Anne St-Remi Hospital in Brussels with CHP to lower its utilities costs via the use of a single fuel source for electricity and hot water generation. The system is expected to save the hospital some 370 tonnes of CO2 annually.

Specialist in x-ray shielding products, Raybloc, has developed a new twostage warning light for incorporation into its doors.

Liverpool’s Aintree University Hospital has worked with B&M Waste Services to reduce its clinical waste output by over 28 tonnes a month, while around 300 tonnes of ‘offensive’ waste is collected annually and sent to landfill sites, where the methane produced is captured and re-used to generate electricity.