IHEEM must be continually responsive to change across the NHS landscape, and resolute in driving membership recruitment forward.
The annual conference and exhibition had been, once again, a major source of income and, in 2005, the profit sharing arrangement with the estates division of the Department of Health had ceased. “In terms of Institute development, work in the past 12 months has been concerned with how to increase the importance and relevance of the Institute and to make it more responsive to the changing NHS landscape. The pace of change, and the extent of change, seem to be accelerating,” Richard Nugent stated at the AGM, which was held at the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, London, on 16 May.
He continued: “The challenge to the Institute is to keep up with change and recognise the implications of change. “A key issue is to broaden the membership, the base of the Institute, to include craftsmen, apprentices, facilities professionals and other related personnel without, of course, diluting our core engineering expertise.
“It’s part of our role to provide individual members with a route to career development within the health estates industry.”
Richard Nugent said a further aspect of the role was to provide employers of professionals in healthcare estate and allied fields with an assurance that individuals in IHEEM membership attained a high standard of expertise and had access to continuing development processes. Richard Nugent introduced the new president Phil Nedin who emphasised the importance of re-establishing an active recruitment drive, and pointed to the difficulty encountered in attracting graduates into the healthcare engineering arena.
To advance, IHEEM had to identify and market what it uniquely had to offer, Phil Nedin stated.
