RECENT NEWS

The Institute wishes to remind those wanting to submit a proposal for a technical paper, discussion workshop, symposium, roundtable debate, or poster session, at this year’s Healthcare Estates conference (1-2 November at Manchester Central) that the deadline for receiving these is 11 March.

IHEEM will again be participating in the Big Bang: UK Young Scientists and Engineers Fair this year, with the 2011 event taking place at the ICC London ExCel from 10-12 March.

Simon Burns, Minister of State for Health, has been invited to deliver the keynote speech on 1 November at this year’s IHEEM Conference in Manchester. MP for Chelmsford from June 1987 – April 1997, for West Chelmsford from May 1997 to April 2010, and elected as Chelmsford’s MP once again at last year’s General Election, the Minister has been active in politics since 1970.

Norfolk’s James Paget University Hospital has passed its recent Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) audit, having called in ABB’s Measurement Products Service team to complete cold chain fridge mapping of its blood product storage equipment.

A new book, “Managing facilities and real estate”, by Michel Theriault, the principal at Ontario-based facility, property, and asset management consulting firm, Strategic Advisor, focuses particularly on the key skills of strategy, management, and leadership, rather than on the “mechanics” of managing facilities.

Guildford Borough Council has approved plans for a £25 million hospital development at the city’s Farnham Road Hospital submitted by the Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, advised by Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design.

The Healthcare Facilities Consortium’s 2010/2011 Annual Conference, at Manchester’s Old Trafford stadium from 7-8 March, will be themed “Doing more with less – fact or fiction? Reality or hype”.

Kier Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of construction, development and service group Kier Group plc, has acquired the entire issued share capital of Beco, a Totnes, Devon-headquartered designer and installer of renewable energy sources, from directors Nigel Brunton-Reed and Hilary White, and Finance South West Growth Fund Limited Partnership.

The Healthcare Cleaning Professionals Association (AHCP), which has over 700 existing members, has opened two new branches in Ireland.

Weighing equipment supplier Avery Weigh-Tronix says its equipment could help the East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust save £100,000 per year on its clinical waste disposal.

VINCI Park has won a 30-year PFI contract to design, build, finance, and operate, a new multi-storey car park at East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust’s Lister Hospital site in Stevenage.

Royal Philips Electronics has installed an LED lighting and control system within the Premier Suite of The Yorkshire Clinic in Bingley, in the process “creating an ambience more akin to an upmarket hotel”. Rooms have also been equipped with Philips flat screen televisions.

The second sustainability report published by the DHL-operated NHS Supply Chain reveals that, in the past two years, it has cut, by 12%, its warehouse and transport carbon emissions, become the world’s first organisation to trial an 18-tonne hybrid vehicle, and, working with hospitals across the Bristol and Bath area, saved around 10,400 vehicle miles over the course of a year.

Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust has called in Vanguard Healthcare to deploy two mobile units at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton as a “visiting hospital” to undertake additional patient procedures across a wide range of surgical disciplines.

Hampshire-based ISO 9001-2001 compliant Next Control Systems has appointed Michael Edwards to the new position of northern sales manager of its fast-expanding Tutela Medical Division.

Race Cottam Associates has helped win planning permission for a new threestorey healthcare development it says will “revolutionise” the laboratory services used by Sheffield’s healthcare network.

Following last year’s announcement that the HEVAR (heating, ventilating, air conditioning and refrigeration) show was evolving from a regional to a national show in 2011,

The Government’s Health and Social Care Bill, setting out measures – including the disbanding of England’s primary care Trusts and strategic health authorities – designed to “modernise the National Health Service and put patients at the heart of everything it does”, was published on 19 January.

IHEEM President Paul Kingsmore will give a personal view on the likely impact on the NHS estate of last year’s health White Paper as one of the highlights of a wide-ranging IHEEM-supported conference, “Healthcare Infrastructure 2011”, being staged by the Building Better Healthcare events team at Austin Court in Birmingham on 2 March.

At the IFHE’s 16 November Council meeting in Tokyo (see also story on page 6) Francesco Castella handed over the Presidency to Yasushi Nagasawa of Japan. The meeting saw 24 IFHE member countries report on their activities during the past two years.