RECENT NEWS

The ISS Facility Services Healthcare catering service at The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust has achieved the Soil Association’s Food for Life Bronze Standard Award – the first time a contract caterer has achieved this important accreditation in the NHS – and is now looking to progress to the Silver standard.

Eastwood Park is to run an engineers’ apprentice ‘summer school’ in August, offering four days’ residential training for hospital engineering apprenticeships.

Wandsworth Healthcare, the specialist provider of nurse call systems, has appointed Stuart Guest, who has 25 years’ experience in developing and delivering nurse call and communications solutions to large hospitals, as national framework manager.

Acting on behalf of the Watkin Jones Group, the Healthcare team at Jones Lang LaSalle has successfully forward funded a modern, purpose-built health centre in Chester city centre for a total consideration of £18.5 million with Primary Health Properties (PHP).

Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital has ‘significantly improved’ the efficiency of its new low pressure hot water heating system by installing 30 BoilerMagXT units from Eclipse Magnetics.

Two years since its launch, the UK’s Fire Door Inspection Scheme (FDIS) has more than 400 candidates registered on its online training programme, while over 150 ‘fire door experts’ have passed the FDIS Diploma, and are using the designation, DipFD.

Downing College Cambridge (pictured) will be the venue for a three-day crossdisciplinary course aimed at clinicians, designers, project and facility managers, planners, architects, and engineers, ‘with an interest in the latest concepts and ideas that will contribute to the design of an emergency department that meets contemporary and future needs’, being held from 7-9 July.

A new range of room controllers, the SE8000 Series from Schneider Electric, integrate a thermostat/temperature sensor and programmable room controller in a single unit.

International ‘total facilities management service provider’, OCS, has invested in international FM consultancy, Agents4RM, with the aim of establishing a global professional services business for the FM and built environment sector.

Clifton Hospital in St Annes, Lancashire, has signed an agreement with EuroSite Power for the provision of ‘clean’ electricity, heat, and hot water from a CHP system, ‘provided at zero capital outlay to the NHS Trust, but affording lower energy bills for 15 years’.

BOC Healthcare, reportedly the UK’s largest medical gases business, has made its first delivery of compressed medical gas to NHS hospitals in Scotland (to the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary), marking the start of its new contract to supply medical gases to over 330 customers, from Shetland down to the Scottish Borders.

With, as Mark Jones, director of Learning and Development at Atkins puts it, ‘the UK not generating enough new engineers’, 3 March saw the official launch of the ‘EngTechNow’ campaign, which aims ‘to increase the status of Engineering Technicians’, and is targeting registration of 100,000 such technicians by 2020.

A workshop on steam sterilisation of dental instruments at the University of Glasgow Dental School covered subjects ranging from recent steam sterilisation changes in Scotland, to how transmissible spongiform encephalopathy agents can be inactivated by steam, writes IHEEM in instrument decontamination and validation engineer at the School, and the event’s organiser.

Andy Wavell, IHEEM’s IFHE representative, and the commissioning editor of the annual IFHE Digest, is calling on potential contributors of articles for the 2015 IFHE Digest to supply him with synopses of around 200 words by 23 May this year; the deadline for completed articles will be 11 July 2014.

Jim Barnes, a Fellow of IHEEM, Chartered Engineer, and the first Principal, in the late 1960s, at the then newly established Hospital Engineering Centre in Falfield (later Eastwood Park), has died, aged 89.

Twenty-four members and guests from IHEEM’s North-West Branch recently visited the Robinson’s Brewery in Stockport, to be ‘educated in the brewing process’.

Following ‘extensive profession-wide reviews during 2013’, the Engineering Council has re-issued its two key Standards documents.

Step Exhibitions, organisers of IHEEM’s Healthcare Estates 2014 conference and exhibition in Manchester (7-8 October at Manchester Central), have released details on a programme of topical conference/seminar events (HEJ – March 2014) taking place during May to complement the conference – on topics including water quality and safety, medical device compliance, and sustainability.

Providing an effective healing environment for patients facing a wide range of mental health issues, while balancing their needs with security, safety, and affordability considerations, will be key area of focus at this year’s Design in Mental Health (DIMH) conference and exhibition, taking place from 13-14 May at the National Motorcycle Museum in Bickenhill near Solihull.

Barbara Weiss Architects (BWA) has completed the extensive refurbishment, extension,and change of use, of a redundant 1990s office block into the new Wokingham Medical Centre.

The 1,600 m2 NHS building provides facilities for up to 16 GPs and five nurses, along with a new pharmacy and flexible medical suite. Relocated from two separate sites, the practice now occupies a site in Wokingham’s town centre.