IHEEM President, Greg Markham, who promised, on taking up the role last year, to visit every UK Institute Branch during his two-year tenure, was special guest at the recent IHEEM London Branch 2013 AGM and accompanying evening get-together at the King Henry VIII Hotel, Bayswater.
Speaking following an enjoyable dinner, he used his hour-long presentation both to re-emphasise some of the key goals set out in IHEEM’s ‘five-year plan’ – including significantly raising member numbers, broadening the Institute’s appeal and ‘reach’, promoting its expert information provider role, and strengthening its links with other similar bodies – and to give his personal view on some of the key challenges and opportunities for the estates and facilities community amid the emerging ‘new healthcare landscape’.
A new ‘day job’
The IHEEM President, who took up a new ‘day job’ as technical director at EMCOR on 1 March, having previously been technical services director at G4S Integrated Services UK, said he was particularly pleased to see a number of non-IHEEM members in the audience, who he hoped would soon join, strongly in accord with one of the five-year plan’s key goals – to raise individual member numbers from the current 1,600 to 5,000 by 2018. After an introduction from Branch chairman, John Crawford, Greg Markham explained, in opening his address, that 2012 had been a good year financially for the Institute. While it had operated ‘at a sizeable deficit’ for the last few years, and had a budgeted £95,000 overspend for 2012, it had actually only over-spent by £39,000, meaning that the goal of achieving ‘break even’ in 2014 was now within sight.
Strong pipeline of applications
While in 2012 individual member numbers had not risen significantly, the Institute had, he explained, ‘a very strong pipeline’ of some 40 plus applications, while the quota of Affiliate Members had increased by two per cent overall. Greg Markham encouraged all those attending to engage, wherever and whenever possible, with the ‘rare animals known as apprentices’, to get them to contact IHEEM with a view to Student Membership; the first year is free. Many such apprentices, he believed, either did not recognise that they had the capabilities and experience to become an Engineering Technician, or indeed fully appreciated what IHEEM could do for them and their career. He told the audience: “We now have some 180 Company Affiliate Members, providing access to four named persons per Affiliate. Equally, we have an extremely efficient electronic application processing system, and can potentially turn around applications within as little as 2-3 working days.”
A specialist education provider
The IHEEM President then went on to discuss, in more detail, the five-year plan that will take the Institute through to its 75th anniversary in 2018. Alongside growing the membership, and developing the membership ‘package’, IHEEM needed, among its key priorities, he said, to serve as ‘the specialist education provider’ in healthcare engineering; further reduce its costs; and become ‘an arbiter of guidance – a definitive voice in its field’, simultaneously harnessing such attributes to develop additional income stream. Without this money, the Institute would not have the sound financial basis on which to grow. Fortunately, IHEEM was well placed to harness the resources, expertise, skills, and knowledge, of both private and public sector personnel working in the sector.
IHEEM’s salesforce
Greg Markham also alluded to IHEEM’s new ‘Member-get-Member’ scheme, emphasising that every Member could act as the organisation’s ‘salesforce’. Alluding to the new ‘Young Member’ group, he said: “We need to lower the Members’ average age, and get young engineers onto the end of the conveyor belt to replace the older personnel retiring, and thus ensure a sustainable future workforce.” He was also keen to get regular feedback on some of the most pressing concerns of healthcare estates and engineering personnel via the Branch network, and to strengthen the Institute’s mentoring programme, one of the goals of which is to encourage registration at one of the three Engineering Council grades.
Sharing knowledge
He said: “We also need to encourage better knowledge sharing, especially when addressing common estates and engineering issues, not only between NHS Trusts, but also between the public and private sectors, and indeed between competing private sector FM providers. The NHS is no longer very joined up, which makes knowledge sharing even more critical, and as an Institute we can stimulate collaboration between private sector companies who might otherwise be extremely reluctant to engage with each other for competitive commercial reasons.”
A new conference stream
Given that IHEEM was principally an engineering institute, Greg Markham felt it entirely appropriate that this year’s Healthcare Estates conference would feature a new ‘engineering stream’; some past delegates had felt that this was an area not afforded sufficient weight within IHEEM annual conference programmes. Other key priorities within the five-year plan included working more effectively with other bodies, so IHEEM and other like-minded organisations could become ‘one voice’ when liaising with the NHS and wider government, and encouraging estates professionals to progress through the various Engineering Council grades. Greg Markham also alluded to some of the key Institute-staged events, such as the recent IHEEM/Crofton roundtable in London (HEJ – January and February 2013), which he said help to ensure that IHEEM is seen as a key influencer. The next roundtable, held on 22 February in Manchester, had, he explained, been organised to discuss the new, revised and updated NHS Premises Assurance Model (see also pages 24-30). There was also, he said, a broader job to do in promoting IHEEM and its expertise to those who might be unaware of the Institute.
Engaging with government
Looking ahead, Greg Markham said that, following last November’s successful parliamentary event at the House of Commons (HEJ – January 2013), IHEEM was now planning a parliamentary lunch on 22 November this year, with plans to invite a Ministerial speaker. Greg Markham added: “Holding relevant and timely seminars and courses will also continue to be a key activity for IHEEM. I can, for instance, reveal that the DH is on course to issue its promised Pseudomonas update next month, and is consulting on a re-write of HTM-05, and also on some HBNs for A&E. The Department is using us as a consultation point, so we know the potential timings, and we are beginning to assemble seminars to provide the guidance as updates are published.” Returning briefly to costs, Greg Markham said the majority of the budgeted £50,000 that IHEEM had not overspent by in 2012 was attributable to reduced overheads, with ‘some great work’ at head office, growing use of telephone and ‘virtual ‘conferences, and online publication of key correspondence, rather than it being posted out. The number of committee meetings was also being reduced.
Filling the void
With the Department of Health’s own in-house estates and facilities resources having significantly declined in recent years, the IHEEM President also alluded to plans for the Institute to ‘step into the void’, with the potential publication, online or in print, of ‘best practice, how to’ guidance on key areas such as wiring, ventilation, medical gases etc, as an alternative to the weighty HTMs which he doubted the DH could afford to continue producing in written form in the future. Some 68 countries were currently using HTMs, but Greg Markham said that, in future, those non-Members requiring an IHEEM-produced ‘How to’ guide could potentially pay for such information. He said: “One thing we can be sure of is that we can be much quicker to market with new guidance than the Department of Health.”
International activity
Towards the end of his presentation, Greg Markham discussed IHEEM’s bid to stage the International Federation of Hospital Engineering (IFHE) Congress in 2018; the Institute was also exploring what he described as possible expatriate links with healthcare estates and engineering personnel overseas. Ian Hinitt, until last year deputy director of estates at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, (who has recently formed his own outsourced FM company, and is an IHEEM Board member and Trustee), is currently spearheading a UKTI-backed reciprocal trade initiative between India and the UK dubbed ‘Enterprise Alliance for Reciprocal Trade in Health’, or ‘EARTH’. Its goals include boosting GDP in both countries, providing additional business opportunities for suppliers of many healthcare products and services, and especially SMEs, and, in the process, significantly boosting healthcare infrastructure in a country with a population of over 1.2 bn where there is significant variation in the standard of healthcare facilities in different parts of the nation.
‘Better integrated’ event
Closer to home, Greg Markham said that, with Step Exhibitions (sister company to HEJ’s publisher, Step Communications) having recently been appointed to run the exhibition, conference, and dinner, at Healthcare Estates going forward, the event should have a ‘better integrated’ feel. Alongside plans to further improve the flagship IHEEM event, the Institute is also looking at staging a ‘mini’ one-day conference and exhibition event from 2014 on, potentially with a series of ‘technical’ awards presented in the evening. Presentation of such awards, probably at a London-based event venue, would ‘reinforce and celebrate IHEEM’s education face’. Although the standard of entries for last year’s Awards had been high, Greg Markham said IHEEM would like a wider field to choose from, and encouraged more members to nominate potential winners.
Co-location potential
He said: “In future, the Conference dinner might be a more social, rather than a technical event, while there is also a strong likelihood, should IHEEM succeed in its bid for the 2018 IFHE Congress, that we will co-locate that event, which is taking place in IHEEM’s 75th year, with Healthcare Estates over three days.” This could, he said, be complemented by a series of social and educational ‘break-out visits’ to different parts of the UK, giving overseas visitors, in particular, a chance both to see the wider attractions of different regions, and to learn more about professional estates practice here in the process. In concluding, as he briefly looked ahead at the new UK healthcare landscape taking shape, the IHEEM President said the transfer of former LIFT and PCT built assets to the new NHS Property Services Company would present some interesting challenges for the estates community – with the prospect of more care being delivered in the community putting renewed emphasis on ensuring that community facilities had an environment suitable for 21st-century care.
Other sectors could learn
Alluding, in response to an audience question as to whether the estates and facilities community could have done more to help improve standards of care and the environment at Stafford Hospital (in the wake of the recent Francis Report), Greg Markham said that, happily, estates and facilities personnel had emerged unscathed in a Report (see pages 19-22) which focused largely on poor standards of management, governance, and clinical practice, rather than on any estatesrelated failings. With its strong pedigree in governance and assurance, which the new, updated NHS PAM should help build on, there might, he said, be lessons to be learned in these areas from the healthcare estates and facilities sector for some of those singled out for particular criticism by Robert Francis QC and his team.
