RECENT NEWS

Welsh Minister for Health & Social Services Edwina Hart has said a large North Wales district acute hospital that does not meet current fire safety standards can continue being used, subject to interim measures, but hospital bosses say much of a central 1970s-built ward block needs rebuilding at an estimated £270 million cost.

Galliford Try Facilities Management has won a three-year contract to provide hard facilities management services for independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) on behalf of Circle, which claims to be the UK’s largest partnership of healthcare professionals.

Two individuals who have studied “lean healthcare” provision in Japan, subsequently successfully applying the key principles at a $650 million Seattle tertiary healthcare centre, are joining Manchester’s Manufacturing Institute to apply the “best practice lean methodologies” they say have “revolutionised” the US healthcare industry to UK hospitals.

The Department of Health and HM Treasury recently gave the final sign-off for building to start of the new £225 million PFI-funded hospital at Pembury near Tunbridge Wells, Kent, set to be the UK’s first large acute hospital with 100% single in-patient rooms.

UK office interior design and fit-out specialist Area Sq has transformed the existing Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) assessment centre in Croydon, reportedly the only UK facility that allows assessments of GPs to be undertaken in a realistic environment, into “a pioneering facility” in just 12 weeks.

Southampton University scientists, whose similar research into the metal’s ability to inactivate MRSA led to an ongoing trial at Birmingham’s Selly Oak Hospital, have established that copper surfaces can also inactivate the Clostridium difficile organism.

Health service specifiers will be among the first visitors when Wolseley’s new £3 m Sustainable Building Center (SBC), currently nearing completion by Warwick-based contractor Sol Construction at the company’s Leamington Spa headquarters, opens in June.

The British Fire Consortium (BFC) has launched a website detailing the offerings of 250 member providers of fire risk consultancy, extinguisher supply, installation and maintenance, fire alarms and domestic and residential sprinkler systems.

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has shown the first visitors around its new critical care unit at the city’s Northern General Hospital, said to be Europe’s only one of its kind (Health Estate Journal, April 2008).

Private equity specialist Graphite Capital has sold medical device designer, producer and distributor Summit Medical to global private equity firm The Riverside Company.

The Welsh Assembly Government has approved funding for a 1,493 m2 primary care centre to replace the current GP practice building on Kinmel Avenue, Abergele, North Wales.

Speakers from Government health departments and other key sector bodies representing England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland will describe how each country is tackling hospital cleaning at the Association of Healthcare Cleaning Professionals’ (AHCP) 33rd Annual Healthcare Cleaning & Domestic Management event in Harrogate from 11-13 June.

The Department of Health last month issued “climate change guidance documents” whose aim it said was to encourage health sector workers, including health estates and facilities managers and healthcare engineers, to “play their part in tackling the health effects of climate change”.

At a time when estates and facilities managers are taking increasing responsibility for sensitive information (see article page 51), the Information Commissioner has strongly criticised Hounslow Primary Care Trust for non-compliance with the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act by “failing to respond adequately” to an individual’s request for information about his late father-in-law’s care in a nursing home.

IHEEM’s Northern Ireland Branch promises that a “wealth of high profile speakers” will discuss such topical issues as the “pros and cons” of single room accommodation, infection control, and sustainability, at a two-day conference being staged by the Branch at Bangor’s Marine Court Hotel on 21 and 22 May themed “Making a Difference”.

Nicola Oliver (pictured) has joined IHEEM as the Institute’s new events manager.

The “call for papers” campaign for the conference at this October’s Healthcare Estates 2008 Conference & Exhibition, the leading event for the construction, development and maintenance of UK healthcare facilities, has now closed, and IHEEM reports that this year’s response has been “excellent”.

IHEEM’s 2008 AGM, taking place at the recently refurbished Royal Academy of Engineering at London’s No 3, Carlton House Terrace on 13 May, will see the appointment, as the Institute’s new president for the next two years, of Rob Smith, who is head of the Department of Health Gateway Reviews and director of the Department’s Estates and Facilities Division.

Two IHEEM “Resilience and Emergency Planning” seminars on 11 June in Birmingham and 18 June in London will highlight the Department of Health’s new Health Building Note (HBN) 00-07, one of the first of a new suite of HBNs, which provides specific guidance on developing NHS facilities resilient to a range of threats and hazards.

A Belfast health centre incorporating Technal architectural aluminium glazing systems has won its second architectural award.