RECENT NEWS

The Duke of Kent has officially opened a new corporate head office in Poole in Dorset for BOFA International, a ‘world leader’ in industrial fume and dust extraction technology.

BOFA says the visit by His Royal Highness to its new 12,000 ft2 premises acknowledges its ‘remarkable success’ since a management buy-out in 2015, during which time it has grown its export markets to over 120 countries, and achieved recognition of its technological leadership through a Queen’s Award for Innovation.

Construction product manufacturer, AG, has expanded its specification team to cover the whole of the UK and Ireland with the appointment of seven people.

The expansion comes on the back of a 10% increase in general sales across the business, and will see the seven-strong team focus on commercial growth ‘through relationship building’ with architects, engineers, local authorities and key decision-makers across the education, health, residential, and commercial sectors.

When it comes to the design and installation of a new ultraclean (UCV) operating theatre, the benefits of using a specialist contractor are wide ranging.

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

University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust said the fire – believed to have started at around 1.00 am – had caused ‘extensive smoke damage’ throughout the BHOC, with staff and management now ‘working hard to plan how we care for patients and get the hospital up and running again’.

Forty NHS hospitals and community services across England are to receive £760 million to modernise and transform their buildings and services.

A major new £79.5 m surgical centre designed by architects, BDP, has been given the go-ahead.

ENGIE Refrigeration has supplied what it claims is the world’s largest fleet of chillers using the sustainable refrigerant, R-1234ze, to ‘a major hospital’ in a suburb of Sydney, Australia.

A free, ‘comprehensive illustrated guide to safe and effective site access’ published by multi-specialist engineering contractor, ECEX, explains “how access is a critical contributory factor to the safety of building services engineers and maintenance teams who install and service plant on roofs and other ‘hardto-get-at areas’”.

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

The redevelopment plans, approved by Southwark Council in January 2017, comprise a new NHS healthcare centre and new secondary school, on the site of the former Dulwich Community Hospital.

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 this appointment to all regional lots under the framework, the practice – which has UK offices in Manchester, Birmingham and London – can supply to NHS and public-sector clients nationwide. This provides a fully compliant route to market to access construction consultancy services.

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

The original idea for the vCreate App came from a parent of a child receiving specialist neonatal care at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow. Hospital staff were asked to consider video updates as a way of reassuring parents on the wellbeing of their baby at times when they were not able to be in the Neonatal Unit.

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 that leads on safe water in today’s healthcare environment.

The Water Hygiene Centre, based in Charlbury in Oxfordshire, says that its open training courses are ‘designed specifically for the needs of Water Safety Group members – from those working in estates management, mechanical design, and hard and soft facilities management, to infection prevention and control specialists’.

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

A joint venture between University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust Foundation Trust (UHB) and HCA Healthcare UK (HCA UK), being developed by the specialist healthcare property company, the 14,728 m2 hospital will be equipped with the latest technology to provide ‘some of the most complex surgical and medical procedures’ in cancer, cardiology, neurology, hepatobiliary, urology, orthopaedics, and stem cell transplantation.

The Government must ‘stop approaching the NHS and social care as a liability to be managed, and instead look at it as investment that delivers a good return’.

However, ‘throwing money at the system’ will not on its own be sufficient if the UK’s health and care system is to be fit for the 21st century’. So says the Lord Darzi Review of Health and Care: Interim Report, a new report from independent ‘think tank’, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which considers the current ‘state and condition’ of the NHS, highlights those areas where the greatest improvements have been made in the past decade, and looks at where – for example in efforts to ‘join up’ health and social care, provide early access for cancer treatment to all, and afford sufficient levels of support to the mentally unwell – substantial improvements still need to be made

According to the CBRE, the global facilities management (FM) market will be worth USD 1 trillion by 2025 – ‘and that’s just that which is outsourced’.

Its prediction comes against the backdrop of the recent unveiling of ISO 41001, Facility management – Management systems – Requirements with guidance for use, ‘published to help FM teams achieve optimum efficiency’.

The Construction (Retention Deposit Schemes) Bill has just been published in time for its 2nd Reading on Friday (27 April 2018).

The Bill stipulates that, unless the monies are protected, any clause in a construction contract enabling the deduction of cash retentions will be invalid. Cash retentions will have to be safeguarded within a retention deposit scheme. The Bill will apply to the whole of the UK.

NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) has launched a new Construction Consultancy Services Framework, which it says is expected to save the public sector some £16 million over the next four years.

Enabling NHS and wider public sector organisations to access services such as quantity surveying, civil engineering, and architecture, it provides a fully compliant route for public sector purchasing teams to access a comprehensive range of construction consultancy services.

Andrew Taylor, the former locksmith employed by London’s Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, has been sentenced to six years imprisonment for defrauding the NHS of almost £600,000, in the first conviction secured by the NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA) since its establishment as a new Special Health Authority last November.

Having heard that he abused his position to defraud his employer of £598,000, the jury unanimously found him guilty of Fraud by Abuse of Position, contrary to sections 1 and 4 of the Fraud Act 2006.

Mistley-based lift consultant, ilecs, has won a five-year contract from Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to provide its Authorising Engineer Service for Lifts, extending its existing 11-year partnership with the Trust.

Devon Medical Turnkey Solutions has recently refurbished a ‘dated’ X-ray room at York Hospital prior to the installation of new diagnostic equipment.