RECENT NEWS

Carillion’s new STN (Sustainability Talk and News) is ‘an exciting new online portal, which will host a range of opinion, comment, videos, presentations, and case studies, looking at key issues of sustainability from the building services and construction industry, worldwide’.

Balfour Beatty Engineering Services (BBES) has won a £1.7m health contract to design, supply, and install M&E services associated with the development of the Combined Services Department (CSD) at Morriston Hospital, Swansea.

A practical guide ‘for professionals interested in using a competition to procure a great design for a new building or structure’ has been launched by the RIBA.

Four years after it move to Stockport’s Newby Road Industrial Estate, medical gas pipeline specialist, Precision UK, is once again expanding, and moving to a new, state-of-the-art design, manufacturing, and training facility, in the town’s Hazel Grove.

Users and suppliers of water treatment systems that use elemental copper for Legionella control should be aware that, from 1 February this year, it will be illegal to sell or use water treatment systems that use such copper to add copper ions to water as a biocide.

Kajima Partnerships and its construction partner, Mansell, advised by Indigo Planning, have been given the go-ahead for Bicester Community Hospital – Oxfordshire’s second community hospital in 40 years.

A ‘lack of transparency ‘in the market, leaving NHS Trusts in England ‘unable to make cost-efficient decisions about purchasing supplies’, is seeing such organisations ‘pay over the odds’ for everyday products, costing the taxpayer ‘an unnecessary £500 million each year’, say Ernst & Young and the product comparison website for the NHS, Peto.

Sodexo has won a five-year contract (with an option for a two-year extension) to deliver total soft FM services for Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust.

The Wandsworth Group has appointed Ben Griffin as service co-ordinator for its health sector range of products, including its IPiN nurse call and Telecall bedside computing systems.

Low carbon energy efficiency, demand side response measures implemented at Stevenage’s Lister Hospital in conjunction with KiWi Power, a ‘smart grid’ and energy demand management specialist, are expected to generate over £100,000 annually in new revenue.

I was interested to read the ‘Technical editor’s view’ within the article on the Weiss Klimatechnik Mediclean CPM system in the November 2012 issue of Health Estate Journal (pages 71-74).

The Government last month published details of a ‘new approach’ to public/private partnerships – PF2, following ‘a broad-based engagement process’ last year that sought views on how the existing PFI system could be reformed.

Up to £50 million in Department of Health funding is to be made available to NHS Trusts and local authorities, working in partnership with care providers, ‘to help tailor hospitals and care homes to the needs of people with dementia’.

New Energy Management (NEM) has launched in the UK the IMECA Legionella Control System, which is claimed to provide ‘24/7 protection’ against microorganisms in water systems, and to be ‘proven to be effective’ against bacteria, fungi, spores, micro-plasma and viruses, including Legionella and Pseudomonas.

Vernacare has been highly commended in the 2012 Manufacturer of the Year Awards – joining an elite group of finalists, including BAE Systems, Coca-Cola, Ford, Rolls Royce, Sony, and United Biscuits.

IHEEM has available a number of fully funded (no cost) invitations to the NHS Sustainable Development 2013 Conference and Exhibition, to be held at the Brewery Conference Centre in London on 14 February.

A newly promoted Estates Officer at the Bradford District Care Trust, who began his working life as an apprentice electrician aged 16, and whose varied subsequent career has seen him spend 19 years in the NHS, is among the latest tranche of new IHEEM Associate Members (listed right).

IHEEM is supporting Climate Week 2013, which will take place from 4-10 March, and is being backed by numerous business organisations, local government and educational establishments, scientific bodies, professional Institutes, the third sector, and a wide range of high profile individuals.

The IHEEM enewsletter has just passed its first anniversary and, the Institute’s recruitment and membership manager, Chris Parker says, ‘has quickly been recognised as a primary source of up-to-date information on all that goes on within IHEEM’.

Cadogans, a specialist engineering consultancy that says it strives to treat its clients as if they are ‘part of its in-house team’, has joined IHEEM as a Company Affiliate. Team leader, Building Services, Gerry Brannigan, said: