RECENT NEWS

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.

London Branch Members and their guests recently attended an evening technical presentation at the King Henry VIII Hotel, Bayswater, at which Matthew Morse, lead technical manager at Clearwater Technology, examined the latest developments in the guidance and standards for achieving and maintaining water quality within buildings, Branch secretary and treasurer, Alan Gascoine, writes.

After reviewing its annual Awards last year, IHEEM has introduced two new awards for 2013 – for Sustainability and Marketing – both to be sponsored.

“Many members will already be aware that Professor David Hurrell lost his brave fight against Leukaemia and passed away last November,” writes IHEEM recruitment and membership manager, Chris Parker.

The opening keynote speech at this year’s Healthcare Estates conference and exhibition will be given by David Flory CBE, Chief Executive of the NHS Trust Development Authority (NHS TDA), which was established as a Special Health Authority in June 2012 ‘to provide leadership, support, and development, for those providers that remain NHS Trusts’.

Lister Hospital, a 480-bed district general hospital in Stevenage, recently turned to Dalkia for the delivery of heating, hot water, and electricity, in a project expected to save the NHS Trust involved around £500,000, and reduce its carbon footprint by 4,000 tonnes of CO2 annually.

Systems manufacturer for the plumbing and heating industry, Pegler Yorkshire, has invested £250,000 in a new interactive training centre at its Doncaster site. Created to showcase its complete product range to installers and customers, the facility allows products to be tested, viewed, and each’s benefits clearly understood, which the company says will allow it to ‘fully connect with its customers’.

Marks and Spencer, Costa Coffee, and WHSmith, have become the first major retailers to take space in the new £5 million ‘Welcome Centre’ at the Bristol Royal Infirmary.

Despite improvements to the way that the NHS manages its property, annual savings worth £2.3 billion remain available given the adoption of better facilities management and procurement practices.

An award-winning hospital has opened a new surgical cardiac ward which it says offers patients and their families ‘the equivalent of five-star accommodation’.

Following the selection of Cambridge University Hospitals as the regional major trauma centre for the new East of England Trauma Network, off-site construction specialist, Yorkon, has helped to increase theatre capacity at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.