Sharing good practice, changing perceptions

This was the topic of a lively roundtable staged jointly in London recently by IHEEM and multidisciplinary engineers, Crofton Design, which sought to identify the causes, and some of the potential solutions. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports on the debate’s first ‘half’, where much of the focus was on levels of existing procurement skills, and how existing expertise might be better shared. Next month’s HEJ will cover the roundtable’s second ‘half’, in which participants looked at what more could be done to attract new entrants to the profession, and what role the sector, Institutes such as IHEEM, and the Government, can play.

The roundtable debate was held at Lutyens, a Terence Conran-designed restaurant housed in the former Reuters and Press Association headquarters in Fleet Street. Chairing the discussions was Ian Hinitt, until recently deputy director of estates at the Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, who recently set up his own consultancy, Apex 4D, to provide outsourced built environment consultancy to clients in the healthcare sector. The roundtable participants, who included senior estates and facilities personnel, architects, an academic, engineers, a major equipment supplier’s sales and marketing director, and a senior representative from the Department of Health’s NHS Estates and Facilities Policy Division, began by each briefly describing their own career background, expertise, and professional interests. First to speak was Ian Hinitt, who explained that he is a time-served craftsmen, who originally served an apprenticeship in the NHS. He said: “I am also a Chartered Engineer and a board director of IHEEM; I chair the Institute’s management and finance committee, and was, until, very recently, deputy director of estates at Bradford Teaching Hospitals. I am now managing director of an entrepreneurial start-up, in its sixth week of trading.”

Identifying best practice