RECENT NEWS

Construction and engineering company and modular building specialist, MTX Contracts, has achieved Tier 1 British Standards Institute (BSI) Building Information Modelling (BIM) Level 2 Business / Certification following a 12-month verification process.

The Royal Academy of Engineering has announced the appointment of Dr Shabana Haque OBE as its head of Engineering Policy ‘to help enhance government’s access to expert engineering policy advice’.

Vanguard Healthcare Solutions has been awarded a place on a national framework to provide clinical managed services.

The medical technology company has won a place under the NHS SBS (NHS Shared Business Services) Clinical Managed Services Agreement. The Framework Agreement makes provision for a wide range of clinical managed services, managed maintenance services, and consultancy services, to support Managed Service Provision (Lot 1). The framework covers a period of four years from 1 January 2019-31 December 2023, with the provision to extend for a further year.

Deanestor has manufactured and installed over 5,000 furniture items in a £1.4 million contract for the new Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary.

Intelligent washroom control and water efficiency specialist, Cistermiser’s new website dedicated to IoT (Internet of Things) water temperature and flow monitoring, www.linkthru.com, provides full details on ‘the many practical advantages delivered by this innovative use of technology’.

BES, the ‘specialist in sophisticated healthcare, pharmaceutical, and cleanroom facilities’, has been awarded a £1.75 million design and build contract for a new pharmacy and aseptic suite for chemotherapy and clinical trial/ emerging therapy at Weston Park Hospital in Sheffield.

Clearwater Technology, the nationwide provider of water, air, and hygiene management, has appointed Paul Wilson as head of SafeCare, its dedicated risk assessment consultancy division.

A UK medical technology company is helping a Lothian hospital increase its capacity for endoscopy examinations and reduce waiting times.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and BAM Construction have completed a new children’s cardiac hybrid theatre and intra-operative MRI facility at Leeds Children’s Hospital on the Leeds General Infirmary site, creating a new dedicated environment for paediatric cardiac surgery and paediatric neurosurgery.

Offsite construction specialist, the McAvoy Group, has appointed its first CEO and a new MD, further strengthening its management team, and says it has plans to double the size of its existing business by 2025.

Eugene Lynch (pictured left), the company’s managing director since 2007, has taken up the position of chief executive; he will lead the Group’s expansion into the residential sector, and spearhead the investment, development, and launch, of a new offsite housing factory.

Meanwhile Mark Lowry (right) has joined as MD, taking full responsibility for the existing business and the continued delivery of its strategic growth plan. He has over 30 years’ experience leading highly successful companies in the construction industry. He was formerly Group director of CRH, the world’s second largest building materials group, with 90,000 staff and sales of €26.8 billion, and, prior to that, managing director of Northstone, Northern Ireland’s largest building materials and construction group, which includes Farrans Construction.

UCL’s Bartlett Real Estate Institute (BREI) in London is launching a ‘unique’ MSc programme in Healthcare Facilities that will explore how the physical environment affects healthcare.

Glasgow-based camper-van conversion firm, Caledonian Campers, has undertaken what the designer and manufacturer of specialist thermostatic mixing valves, showers, and taps, dubs an ‘outstanding bespoke conversion’, to create a special ‘Show Van’, in which Horne Engineering can demonstrate its product range to hospital engineers and facilities management staff, infection prevention and specialist care staff, architects, consulting engineers, and FM providers.

A new report from the Committee on Climate Change (the CCC), 'Net Zero – The UK’s contribution to stopping global warming', published on 2 May, says the UK can end its contribution to global warming within 30 years ‘by setting an ambitious new target to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050’

The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) has delivered a framework for the UK construction and property industry ‘to transition’ new and existing buildings to becoming net zero carbon by 2050, to meet the ambitions of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Bender UK has signed an exclusive distributor agreement with Merivaara of Finland to supply operating tables to hospitals and healthcare facilities in the UK and the Republic Ireland.

Demonstrating that it is about ‘more than modular and offsite construction’, MTX has completed a refurbishment, remodelling, and extension, of the existing Resuscitation Department at Plymouth’s Derriford Hospital, creating a new ‘resus’ unit incorporating additional beds and state-of the art equipment, while adjacent clinical activity continued uninterrupted.

A ‘topping out’ ceremony has recently taken place to mark the structural completion of the new health centre in Dulwich.

The Mayor of Southwark, Cllr Catherine Rose, and Dulwich and West Norwood MP, Helen Hayes, joined the CCG’s director of Finance, Malcolm Hines, to ‘top out’ the new building. Each said a few words, emphasising how the development has been shaped by local people, and highlighting the hub’s central role in delivering ‘more joined-up and accessible’ health and wellbeing services in Dulwich and south Southwark.

Sir Andrew Dilnot has been appointed chair of the Oversight Board for the Health Foundation’s new Health and Social Care Sustainability Research Centre (SRC).

The SRC will fund and undertake research on the long-term demand and cost trends affecting health and social care in the UK, with the aim of improving the evidence base to inform policy. Working with a network of funded academic partners, it will produce robust research on the drivers of sustainability in health and social care and long-term projections of health needs, funding, and workforce.

A ‘ground-breaking’ new Innovation Centre aimed at the catering, cleaning, and FM sectors is to open its doors for business on 1 May in Peterborough.

A ‘collaboration’ between Oxford company, GreenTeck Global, ‘an innovator in alternative green technologies’, and commercial kitchen experts, CK Direct, the Centre is based at CK Direct’s factory and showroom just a mile off the A1 (M), and is unusual, Greenteck says, in featuring a fully fitted, fully operational commercial kitchen as its centrepiece, all under one bespoke, stainless steel roof, also fabricated ‘from scratch’ on the premises.

As part of a new centrally controlled vehicle security system, The North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) has recently updated the security of its premises at its Lancashire regional headquarters near Broughton in Preston using Nortech’s stainless steel bollards housing Nedap ANPR cameras.