RECENT NEWS

A ‘large proportion’ of hospitals may be at risk of non-compliance with BS 72734, without being aware, warns Siemens Building Technologies Fire Products.

Failure to test and maintain fire prevention components in ducting can have serious consequences, ventilation maintenance and duct cleaning specialist, Ductbusters, warns.

The Fire Protection Association (the FPA) promotes fire safety within the industry, commerce, and the wider public.

An upgrade of the fire detection system at London’s Eastman Dental Hospital has seen Apollo selected as the technology provider by Fisk Fire Group, the company appointed to supply and install the system to protect the site’s staff, patients, and property.

ADT Fire & Security has upgraded the fire detection system at Chapel Allerton Hospital, in the north of Leeds, from an analogue to a digital addressable system – with addressable smoke and heat multi-sensors, manual call points, addressable interface modules, and a PC-based emergency management system and digital repeater panels installed throughout the site.

BAFE, the independent, third-party certification registration organisation for the fire protection industry, is supporting what it dubs ‘a valuable Scottish research initiative’ into the causes of false alarms from fire alarm systems which it believes should provide valuable information for the entire UK.

Fairfield General Hospital, in Bury, Greater Manchester, is set to cut its annual carbon emissions by some 700 tonnes thanks to the installation of a new CHP unit supplied and commissioned by Cogenco.

Brandon Medical has achieved a ‘Highly commended’ in the Building Better Healthcare Awards 2014. The company’s new operating theatre light, the Quasar eLite (HEJ – May 2014), was commended ‘for a unique set of features which vastly improve user experience over existing offerings’.

Figures recently released by Barbour ABI, ‘chosen provider’ of construction data to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Government, reveal that more than £81 billion worth of renewable energy projects are proposed by 2025, representing nearly half of all infrastructure spending in the UK.

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust has chosen to partner with Sodexo for its cleaning, portering, retail, and private patient services, across its five hospitals in London – Queen Charlotte’s & Chelsea Hospital; Hammersmith Hospital; Charing Cross Hospital; St Mary’s Hospital, and the Western Eye Hospital

BSI has revised the PAS 5748 ‘Specification for the planning, application and measurement of cleanliness services in hospitals’.

Aluminium rainwater solutions specialist, Alutec, has re-launched its ‘increasingly popular’ roof outlet range.

A new venture from Capita plc will harness the healthcare expertise of three leading Capita businesses – its existing health advisory practice, its health insight business, and its health infrastructure practice.

The Central Sterilising Club (CSC) is keen to encourage all those with a professional interest in decontamination and infection prevention and control to join it, explains John Prendergast MIHEEM, decontamination engineer at NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership, and CSC committee member.

In ‘an inspiring curtain-raiser’ to ‘Tomorrow’s Engineers’ week last November, the Arkwright Scholarships Trust made its largest ever award of Scholarships to youngsters that it hoped would be ‘future leaders in the engineering profession’.

A UK waste company – Betts Envirometal (HEJ – September 2013) – has won the Best Financial Efficiency model award in the 2014 Building Better Healthcare Awards.

BSRIA says its new ‘Illustrated Guide to Hot and Cold Water Services’ (see also Water Systems feature and round-up, pages 61-66) complements its other ‘bestselling’ illustrated guides to mechanical and electrical building services and renewable technologies.

The Isle of Wight NHS Trust has signed ‘a ground-breaking strategic estates partnership agreement’ with Ryhurst, via which the latter will deliver ‘a wideranging estates strategy that supports the Trust in the delivery of excellent patient care’.

Bioquell’s 35% hydrogen peroxide vapour (HPV) system (photo shows the Bioquell Q-10 portable decontamination ‘suite’) for the decontamination of Ebola exposed environments has already been successfully used in the UK, the US, France, and the Netherlands, for disinfecting rooms or ambulances used to treat Ebola patients, the company reports.

When Karl Storz successfully bid to refit two integrated theatres at Colchester General Hospital, the team had just nine days to work on each theatre; in just over a fortnight, the hospital had two new OR1 NEO integrated theatres featuring ‘some of the most advanced technology of its kind in the world for carrying out minimally invasive surgery’.