RECENT NEWS

A leading authority for asbestos training provision in the UK, the UK Asbestos Training Association (UKATA), is urging all public sector employees – including those in NHS hospitals – to be ‘asbestos-aware’ in order to better manage what it dubs ‘the ‘ticking time-bomb’ in thousands of public buildings.

A ‘hard-hitting report’ from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Select Committee has backed the building engineering industry’s calls for tougher action on late payment.

The £9.4 million National Garden Scheme (NGS) Macmillan Unit at Chesterfield Royal Hospital has been officially opened by the Duke of Gloucester, with Mott MacDonald delivering multidisciplinary engineering services on ‘one of the UK’s first centres to provide truly holistic cancer care and support in one unit’.

St Bartholomew’s, a former hospital in Rochester, has been sold to MCR Property Group for redevelopment, raising funds for reinvestment into the NHS estate and freeing up land for more local homes to be built.

Speaking on the 25th Anniversary of the Specialist Engineering Contractors’ (SEC) Group, the Group’s chairman, Trevor Hursthouse OBE, called for the setting up of a statutory authority to regulate industry practice.

More NHS patients will be cared for at home and in their community to avoid them going into or staying in hospital unnecessarily, Prime Minister, Theresa May, has announced, as she pledged to cut ‘needless’ hospital admissions and help inpatients return home sooner – through community-based ‘rapid response teams’ and dedicated support for care home residents.

In a move that it says will allow an additional 1,000 people suffering with cancer to receive ‘world-class cancer care’ closer to home, GenesisCare has announced that building work has started on a £12 m expansion to create ‘a stateof-the-art’ cancer imaging and treatment centre’, GenesisCare, Oxford.

Pegler Yorkshire, part of the Aalberts Group, is to be bring together its technologies ‘under the iconic brand name’ of Pegler.

Essentia Trading has announced the winning contractors for two new energysaving frameworks that it says ‘offer unique savings guarantees for NHS Trusts and other public sector organisations’ – the Essentia LED Lighting Framework and the Essentia Battery Storage Framework.

Trend Control Systems, the international manufacturer and supplier of building energy management systems (BEMS), has announced a new appointment to its senior management team, in the form of Stefano D’Agostino.

Leading life-safety systems manufacturer, C-TEC, has announced the promotion of Brian Foster to the newly created role of UK Sales manager.

The Water Management Society is to host a webinar entitled ‘On-site testing for waterborne pathogens and speed of response to contamination events’, presented by Dr Paul McDermott, director of PJM-HS Consulting, on 5 December this year.

Hi-line Industries has moved into a new, larger production facility in Burtonupon-Trent, to meet growing demand for its range of compressed air purification equipment.

A further extension to the Brexit transition period would be ‘hugely unhelpful’ to the construction and building services sectors, the President of the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA), Tim Hopkinson, has said.

He told the Association’s 2018 National Conference that ‘the one thing businesses crave above all else is certainty’, and that the proposal to extend transition arrangements after the UK leaves the European Union would further delay investment decisions.

A new purpose-built operating theatre has been completed at Bender UK’s Ulverston headquarters in Cumbria to offer what the company says is ‘a world-class training and demonstration base’ for new and existing customers to experience its technology first-hand.

The new theatre showroom was formally opened by Bender managing director, Gareth Brunton, on 5 November, during a first customer visit by staff from Manchester University Hospitals.

The demonstration room showcases theatre and clinical equipment offered by Bender as part of its turnkey healthcare solutions for new build and hospital upgrade programmes. It is connected to a plant room with medical IT power systems or isolated power system (IPS) and uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to replicate power for group 2 medical locations, simulating events such as loss of power and shut-down.

The McAvoy Group has been awarded its largest healthcare project to date – a £15 m contract for the offsite construction of a new wing at Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital in Cramlington.

Due for completion next Spring, the 6,500 m2, three-storey building will be linked to the existing hospital. The first floor will be fitted out as part of this contract to accommodate one of the UK’s first purpose-designed Ambulatory Care units, with the other two floors fitted out in the next phase of the development.

Medstor has supplied over 370 full-height and base cabinets, for use across the hospital, and which are said to facilitate location of goods and eliminate stock-outs, plus 250 procedure trolleys and mobile carts in a variety of sizes and heights, for the ‘new’ Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield.

Patients are set to benefit from radical advances in medical technology using artificial intelligence to diagnose diseases at an earlier stage, with the announcement by Business Secretary, Greg Clark, of five new centres of excellence – in Leeds, Oxford, Coventry, Glasgow, and London – for digital pathology and imaging, including radiology, using AI medical advances.

Medical Air Technology (MAT) recently completed the total refurbishment of four ultraclean operating theatres at Sheffield’s Royal Hallamshire Hospital, working with Kier and NG Bailey.

Confirmation of the extra £20.5 bn more in ‘real terms’ annual funding for the NHS by 2023-2024 announced this June, – including at least £2 bn annually for mental health, and an end to the use of the current PFI model, were among the notable elements impacting on health and social care in Chancellor Philip Hammond’s 2018 Budget Speech delivered on 29 October.