RECENT NEWS

AFL Architects has been appointed once more to the NHS Shared Business Services (SBS) Construction Consultancy framework as architects, lead consultants, and contract administrators.

With Carbon and Energy Fund (CEF) Frameworks having already procured over £250 m of projects ‘in the process of delivering gross savings of £50 m plus’, and 245,000 t/CO2 per annum, The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (COCH) and the CEF have unveiled their latest Framework.

‘Ethical and sustainable construction champion’, Dr Shamir Ghumra, formerly director of Sustainable Products at the multi-disciplinary building science centre, BRE, has taken on a new role there, as director of BREEAM – ‘the leading international portfolio of sustainability standards (including CEEQUAL and Home Quality Mark) that has been driving global improvements in buildings and infrastructure for over two decades’.

A new network has been launched ‘to represent the community services sector and forge better links with the rest of health and social care’.

A secure video messaging service that ‘connects parents with their child’s progress’ in NHS neonatal units is being introduced by Trusts across the country.

A meeting of the Heating, Ventilation, Air-Conditioning and Energy Technical Platform, and accompanying Symposium, on 25 June in The Great Hall at London’s St Bartholomew’s Hospital, will focus on topics ranging from ‘The new IHEEM AE(V) Register, and why it is needed’, to ‘What to watch out for in isolation rooms’.

Creator of ‘made-to-measure’ wallpaper murals, Wallsauce.com, says it can now offer ‘an antibacterial and antimicrobial wallpaper for the healthcare sector’.

Prime has secured planning permission for a £65 million specialist hospital facility on the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham campus, Birmingham, which it says will deliver high quality acute healthcare for private patients in the region, and provide additional capacity and specialist facilities for NHS patients.

Coulsdon-based emergency cleaning company, CleanSafe Services (UK), has ‘launched a campaign’ to remind businesses across key sectors – including healthcare – ‘of the urgent need to safeguard staff and customers by applying an anti-slip coating to highrisk floors’.

Construction work is set to commence at the Dulwich Community Hospital site in East Dulwich Grove in south London after the project reached financial close on 1 May

A plant room fire at the Bristol Haematology and Oncology Centre (BHOC), part of the Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI), early on 10 May, saw the evacuation of 53 patients to other wards in the BRI and the Bristol Heart Institute.

An event claimed to be ‘the largest event in the FM calendar’ – The Facilities Show 2018, being held in association with the BIFM and CBRE, will see ‘FM professionals from across the globe’ descend on ExCel London from 19-21 June.

The management, design, operation, maintenance, and cleaning, of a healthcare facility’s water systems and point-of-use services form the brief for the multi-disciplinary Water Safety Group (WSG) that leads on safe water in today’s healthcare environment.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, leading fire safety experts and advocates have urged the Government ‘to implement immediately three important regulatory changes’ they say will ‘significantly improve fire safety for high-rise and highrisk buildings’.

Architects, ADP, and contractor, Logan Construction, have completed a major remodelling of one of London’s busiest hospitals – St Thomas’ Hospital – to create a new emergency care pathway in a dedicated emergency floor.

A new clinical decisions unit is the last phase to be finished in a programme that brings together a new majors area, 62 acute assessment ward beds, emergency paediatric services, a children’s short stay unit, and a centralised urgent care centre. The new resuscitation area, with larger treatment cubicles and dedicated trauma and isolation rooms, now sits at the department’s heart.

The high level of demand on the service and 'a combination of other pressures' led to an overspend in the NHS provider sector in 2017-18, with the sector as a whole having a deficit of £960 million at the end of 2017-18.

NHS Improvement, which released the data in its report, Quarterly performance of the NHS provider sector: quarter 4 2017/18, said this was ‘£464 m above what was anticipated by trusts at the start of the year and £30 m above what the sector anticipated at the end of December’. More than two thirds of providers (156 out of 234 Trusts), however, finished the year ‘at or better than planned financially’, while the provider sector deficit for the past financial year was £1.5 billion down on the 2015-16 figure of £2.45 billion.

Bioquell, a ‘global expert’ in reducing the risk of biocontamination in the healthcare, life science, and pharmaceutical markets, has recently completed a 6-log decontamination of the key clinical areas within a newly constructed ‘world-class hospital’, Sidra Medicine, in Qatar. The disinfection of 450 rooms, with an overall area of 56,000 m3, was implemented in a 15-day time frame ahead of the facility’s grand opening.

Bioquell decontaminated a suite of 12 operating theatres, a sterile processing unit, paediatric and neonatal intensive care units, and other high risk patient areas such as oncology and dialysis. Its team worked alongside numerous departments at Sidra Medicine, with the project successfully completed within the allocated three-week timeframe.

The British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM) has announced plans to develop a new certified accreditation and a suite of training for facilities managers in charge of life safety in buildings.

Responding to Building a Safer Future, the final report by Dame Judith Hackitt published in mid-May, the Institute says it plans to ensure that facilities managers ‘have access to high quality training and professional development that can certify their competency to uphold the highest standards of life safety in the buildings they manage’.

The first patient in the UK has been treated with high energy proton beam therapy (PBT) at Proton Partners’ new Rutherford Cancer Centre in Newport, South Wales – the UK’s first oncology clinic to provide such therapy for targeted tumour treatments.

Proton Partners International has partnered with IBA (Ion Beam Applications), a leading proton therapy solutions provider, and Philips. To plan patient treatment the solution integrates Philips’ Big Bore CT and Pinnacle3 Treatment Planning System. Rutherford Cancer Centre is also the world’s first to be able to carry out spot scanning, or ‘Intensity Modulated Proton Therapy’ (IMPT), with the Philips Pinnacle3 system.

York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has marked a significant milestone in the building of its new £10 million extension to York Hospital with a bolt-tightening ceremony.

Tightening one of the initial structural frame bolts in the extension’s steel frame, Trust CEO, Patrick Crowley, said: “This is the biggest capital investment for many years, and will allow the Trust to continue to provide the highest quality of service to the growing number of patients needing endoscopy. This is an exciting development for the Trust, and will transform our service into a centre of excellence for endoscopy, providing enhanced high quality care to our patients.”