RECENT NEWS

The new £28 million hospital wing at Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI) features a ‘bespoke’ Aid Call Touchsafe Pro wireless nurse call system.

IDEXX, a specialist in rapid microbiology testing for water, has announced the launch across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, of Legiolert, a new culture testing method that it says enables building owners and facility managers to simplify water testing and reduce the risk posed by Legionnaires’ disease.

Eastwood Park will from this month be offering ‘a unique suite’ of new 1.5-day hospital estate-related courses, focusing on ‘PFI’, ‘the Premises Assurance Model (PAM) and the Care Quality Commission (CQC)’, and ‘Energy management and sustainability’, delivered in partnership with estates and facilities management experts, GK Group.

A comprehensive new 120-page guide to carbon and energy saving for NHS Trusts co-produced by IHEEM, HefmA, and the Carbon and Energy Fund (CEF), which the authors say ‘covers every aspect of the energy infrastructure upgrade process’, will be launched at this month’s Healthcare Estates 2017 event in Manchester.

Cundall has supported Edinburgh-based charity, It’s good 2 give!, by helping build Ripple Retreat, its recently opened respite house for young people with cancer and their families, ‘a beautifully serene £1 m retreat’ on the southern bank of Loch Venachar in Callander.

Work has now started on a new £16.4 millon staff accommodation block for ‘key workers’ at the Diana, Princess of Wales Hospital in Grimsby (see artist’s impression).

Vinyl flooring manufacturer, Polyflor, has added new wood effect designs to its relaunched Forest fx PUR flooring collection, incorporating the latest commercial interior trends into one of its most popular sheet vinyl ranges.

Rehau’s Heritage windows have recently met Whipps Cross Hospital’s criteria for replacement windows as part of a wider refurbishment of its wards that would not look out of place in the Grade II listed building, but still offered the benefits of new PVC-U windows.

The latest combined heat and power technology from Veolia will power the first NHS high energy Proton Beam Therapy Centre for specialist cancer treatment, at The Christie, in Manchester, which is due to start treating oncology patients in 2018.

Chris Ash, managing director at ISS Healthcare, has been recognised for his outstanding contribution to the healthcare business sector worldwide.

A two-day workshop being hosted by Greenwich University’s Built Environment Department in London from 1-2 November this year will aim to equip clinical staff who are, or who are about to be, involved in NHS capital projects, more fully, so that they can engage more authoritatively with project teams during the planning and construction/ refurbishment of healthcare buildings.

Following its delivery of hard and soft landscaping and the recently awarded grounds maintenance contract for Liverpool’s Alder Hey in the Park children’s hospital, commercial landscaping company, Ground Control, has been supporting Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust by donating soil, wood sleepers, and gardening tools, to enable the local community, patients, and staff, to plant and grow organic ingredients on site for use in patient meals.

As part of an ongoing commitment to empowering staff to understand and use medical gases safely, BOC Healthcare has extended its e-learning provision ‘to give hospitals even more flexibility’ in how they use its training packages and monitor staff participation.

The US$1.5 billion Ikitelli integrated health campus public-private partnership (PPP) project in Istanbul, which, once complete, will be the world’s largest health campus built on seismic isolators, has reached financial close.

Three ‘unique and specialist’ degree programmes – Foundation Degrees in Hospital Engineering and Medical Equipment Technologies, and a BSc (Hons) in Management of Healthcare Engineering Technologies & Facilities – start at Eastwood Park next month, and, the Gloucestershire-based training establishment points out, ‘there is not long left to apply’.

University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust’s vascular service has successfully completed its integration onto one site, with the re-location of some services from the Leicester Royal Infirmary (LRI) to the city’s Glenfield Hospital.

A £7 m investment in making Harrogate District Hospital more energy-efficient means an estimated £625,000 per year for the next 25 years (over £15.6 million in total) can instead be spent on direct patient care, Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust says.

Cleaning operations at the new Cancer Centre at Guy’s Hospital in London are being managed by CK Group and an in-house team using ‘innovative’ TASKI machines and equipment from Diversey Care.

Medstor had designed and delivered an operating theatre storage system for all three of NHS Lanarkshire’s hospitals that has provided safer, more efficient storage for theatre instrument tray packs, streamlined the entire storage system, and helped reduce wastage on surplus stock.

An architect’s vision for a ‘wave-effect’ building with no roof protrusions, to mirror the sinuous lines of nearby hills, has been achieved with the help of drainage ventilation expert, Studor.