Last month’s HEJ saw editor, Jonathan Baillie, report on ‘the first half’ of a recent roundtable debate staged jointly in London by IHEEM and multidisciplinary engineering consultancy, Crofton Design.
Participants considered the topic: ‘The taxpayer is losing millions of pounds in poorly procured healthcare buildings due to the lack of construction expertise within NHS Trusts; the Government urgently needs to redress this if the losses are not to spiral out of control’. With the first hour’s discussions focusing primarily on existing procurement skill levels, and the reasons behind significant ‘skills gaps’, the final ‘half’ saw debated how best to attract able new entrants to the healthcare estates and allied professions, ensuring effective procurement of healthcare buildings well into the future.
During the roundtable’s first hour or so (HEJ – January 2013), participants had primarily discussed ‘the past and the present’, including current procurement skill levels, the need for greater sharing of the procurement expertise and knowledge that does exist, and the requirement for better design briefs when new healthcare buildings are in prospect. The second ‘half’, however, focused more on the future, and on solutions to current building procurement ‘ills’; one general consensus being that, without a well-trained, enthusiastic, capable, wellrewarded, and stable future workforce, all other efforts would be ‘for nought’. IHEEM’s new President, Greg Markham, cautioned indeed that, unless the sector got the ‘right raw material’ in to start with, appropriate talent and skill were simply ‘not going to filter through’.
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