RECENT NEWS

Manufacturer of ‘high-efficiency’ medical lighting, Daray, has supplied over 1,300 lights to medical facilities in Nigeria. The Derbyshire manufacturer provided lights from its X200 and X350 LED medical examination range to four separate projects within the country.

It is ‘business as usual’ for the surgical team at St Peter’s Hospital, Chertsey, who have just finished working inside a temporary operating theatre deployed by Vanguard Healthcare – used for a variety of procedures while major refurbishment took place.

Kettering General Hospital’s new £30 m Foundation Wing brings together several specialities previously housed in smaller, ‘more out-of-date’ accommodation, and should significantly improve the care offered to children, cardiac, and intensive care patients.

Polyflor’s Expona Control is a new, ‘firstof- its-type’ flooring product – developed for heavily used public areas subject to a risk of spillage or temporary surface water rendering the floor unsafe.

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Brandon Medical, the innovator and manufacturer of surgical lighting technology, has appointed Professor Jonathan Sackier (pictured), ‘one of the pioneers of the laparoscopic surgery revolution’, as the company’s clinical director.

All 14 NHS Trusts investigated by Professor Sir Bruce Keogh’s review team will have to undertake strict improvement plans, while and 11 will be placed into ‘special measures’ – to ensure that his recommendations are fully implemented and patient care improves, the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, announced in the House of Commons on 16 July.

West London Mental Health NHS Trust has named Kier as preferred tenderer for the Broadmoor Hospital redevelopment scheme. (HEJ – February 2013) in a project set to ‘transport the 150-year-old hospital into the 21st century’, providing ‘a modern, fit-for-purpose environment for services’, and securing the future of high secure mental healthcare locally.

Public Health England (PHE) and the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust recently officially opened a new two-storey extension to the current pathology building on the Heartlands Hospital site in Birmingham.

Speaking at the Association of Healthcare Cleaning Professionals recent 2013 Annual Conference in Bolton, in her final address as AHCP national chair, Denise Foster, hotel services manager at South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust, challenged Association members, the NHS, and the Government, to introduce nationally recognised pre-entry qualifications and training standards for healthcare cleaners.

Engineers working in the built environment ‘have an urgent responsibility to help reduce energy consumption, and provide for adaptation of buildings and cities to respond to the challenges of climate change, while accommodating the needs of rapidly growing populations’.

The British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM) and the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) have signed a Partnership Agreement to work together to support future growth in the facilities and workplace management sector.

Balfour Beatty, through its Cowlin brand, has won a £6.3 million contract at Southmead Hospital in Bristol, for the North Bristol NHS Trust, to design and build a new four-storey extension to the Hospital’s existing Learning and Research building.

The Local Improvement Finance Trust (LIFT) programme has delivered ‘a significant range of health and regeneration benefits for some of the most disadvantaged parts of England’, an independent report by AMION Consulting published last month examining the programme’s social and economic impact over the past decade, maintains.

Roderick Pettigrew, deputy chief executive of the Association (formerly the HVCA) since 2008, has been appointed as the new chief executive of B&ES – the Building & Engineering Services Association – with immediate effect, following Blane Judd’s decision to step down in late June.

Avonmouth, Bristol-based Devon Medical Equipment, which has over 35 years’ experience in selling, transporting, de-installing, disposing of, and re-selling, medical equipment throughout Europe, and distributing across the globe, has launched a construction division.

The British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM), Asset Skills, the Facilities Management Association (FMA), and the Cleaning and Support Services Association (CSSA), have agreed to the concept of forming ‘one single and united body to represent facilities management and support services’.

One of C-TEC’s talented apprentices, Richard Finch, has been awarded a prestigious prize for innovation. C-TEC is a UK manufacturer of life safety equipment including fire alarm control panels, voice alarms, call systems, power supplies, and disabled refuge systems.

Capita Symonds has been appointed by social enterprise, Bristol Community Health, to provide strategic estate management services.

‘Nearly 3 in 10 Britons’ think the problems highlighted at Stafford Hospital in the recent Francis Inquiry (HEJ – March 2013) are ‘widespread across the NHS’, a recent Ipsos MORI poll (which saw 1,009 adults aged 18+ questioned) showed.

Mansell has been appointed to design and construct a £5.2 million community hospital in Bicester for project developer and investor, Kajima Partnerships.