RECENT NEWS

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.”

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.