RECENT NEWS

A good showing of delegates was present at Carrow Road, Norwich at the recent re-launch meeting of the IHEEM East Anglia Branch (HEJ – June 2010).

Fifteen members of the East Midlands branch, plus family and guests, recently visited the Royal Derby Hospital as a guest of IHEEM member Charles Harrison, general manager of Skanska Facilities Services, where they were treated to a short presentation on the £334 million, 1,159-bed facility’s seven-year construction, a visit to the hospital’s elevated helipad, and a tour of the main engineering services.

Aspiring directors and senior managers in the EFM field have the chance to evaluate themselves against a series of management competencies and identify their strengths and development needs at the next Development Centre Programme event, being held from 12-14 October at the University of Warwick, with a briefing day on 16 September in London.

IHEEM’s 15 June Council meeting, attended by 15 members, and presided over by President Paul Kingsmore, saw a major focus on the Council’s Modernisation Plan for the Institute.

IHEEM’s International Affairs Committee has put in a bid for the IFHE 2014 Congress, proposing that this 23rd such event be held in Manchester, writes IFHE representative Andy Wavell.

Host of this November’s 21st IFHE (International Federation of Hospital Engineering) Congress in Tokyo (taking place from 17-19 November at Tokyo Big Site, Ariake – HEJ, November 2009) the Healthcare Engineering Association of Japan (HEAJ) reports that registration forms for the event, which can now be downloaded from the Congress website (www.ifhe.info/), are now being accepted.

After a budget with “few surprises”, the organisers of this year’s Healthcare Estates conference and exhibition point out that the challenge for estates and facilities personnel – to develop “lean” healthcare facilities that offer a better quality of service, are fit-for-purpose, efficient, and cost-effective – remains precisely the same. Being held at new venue Manchester Central, Healthcare Estates 2010 takes

GPs and their practice teams, working in consortia, will be handed substantial responsibility for commissioning, while a new “independent and accountable” NHS Commissioning Board will “lead on the achievement of health outcomes, allocate and account for NHS resources, and lead on quality improvement and promoting patient involvement and choice”, a new White Paper proposes.

The “complex balancing act” required to manage the complete water lifecycle in healthcare facilities will be examined at three IHEEM seminars, starting next month.

Designed to help make a hospital stay less arduous for patients, Premier Telesolutions’ new EasiMedia slimline bedside patient entertainment and information terminal “combines the power of a larger terminal with the flexibility of a more compact, and unobtrusive, 10.1” touchscreen”.

Organisations looking for a waste-to energy solution, or keen to discover what funding might be available to help grow their recycling operation . . . .

Kier Eastern has awarded a £10 million sub-contract to Portakabin subsidiary Yorkon for the off-site construction of a new hospital building at Colchester General Hospital.

Wolseley, the specialist trade distributor of plumbing and heating products, has appointed Steve Ashmore as its UK managing director.

The “Temporary Isolation Unit” designed by Leicester-based Renfrew Group International to provide hospital wards with a flexible opportunity to contain infections and make the environment safer for patients (HEJ – October 2009) has won the company the “Partnership with the NHS award” in this year’s Medilink East Midlands Innovation Competition.

A new e2.25 million cancer care unit at Cork University Hospital, designed by architects Watkins Gray International for the Irish Health Service Executive’s estates department, and built by Pierse Contracting, is now complete.

The Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust has held open days to mark completion of its newly-built £75 million Roseberry Park mental health facility at the St Luke’s Hospital, Middlesbrough site.

Remote energy monitoring, providing an in-house energy management advice service to sites, reducing generator use, and improving the efficiency of its fleet, are among measures construction company BAM Construct UK says culminated in it reducing its carbon footprint by 11% in 2009 compared with 2008.

I write to comment on the news story, “Estates manager convicted of £245,000 fraud” (HEJ – May 2010). I found the headline a little sensationalist, and think that we need to take stock of where the NHS and IHEEM members are as regards qualifications.

Penlon, a small Oxfordshire-based company which claims to be the only UK-based independent manufacturer of anaesthesia systems, was recently awarded a 2010 Queen’s Award for Enterprise in international trade for its “continued record growth” and commercial success in overseas markets, where its revenues have “more than doubled” over the past six years.

Claustrophobic and bariatric patients in Surrey and West Sussex will, the unit’s supplier says, be the UK’s first to benefit from “the widest whole body MRI scanner available”, improving their experience and diagnosis, and reducing waiting times.