IHEEM’s President, Greg Markham is encouraging the Institute’s members to engage with their local Branches and offer support and ideas for technical visits, ‘fringe themes’, and social events, as part of IHEEM’s planned bid for the IFHE’s 2018 International Congress.
IHEEM celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2018, and it is hoped that, with a successful bid, it will be chosen to host the international IFHE event in a notable year in its own history, the intention being that the three-day IFHE Congress should complement and extend that year’s Healthcare Estates event in Manchester. Greg Markham, who is technical director at EMCOR Facilities Services, said: “2018 may seem a very long way off, but our written bid needs to be submitted in the second quarter of 2014, and there is substantial work to do to compile the document. The many reasons for bidding include the chance to enrich our very successful annual conference with more overseas speakers and visitors, and to share our knowledge with the wider healthcare engineering community. Perhaps the most important reason, however, is that 2018 marks the 75th anniversary of IHEEM, the world’s oldest Institute of its kind.” IHEEM will need to submit its formal presentation to support its bid to the IFHE World Council at the next IFHE Congress in Buenos Aires, in October 2014. Greg Markham said: “The bid process is competitive. We are aware of at least one other rival bid, and expect more. We have to articulate what our planned event could offer the international community, and include details of supporting social events, technical visits, and fringe activities.”
The IHEEM ‘Win’ theme
International representatives have already been canvassing and lobbying IFHE Council members to gain an insight into what is required to formulate a winning bid. Greg Markham said: “It is some years since we last hosted an International Congress (in Edinburgh in the 1980s), but there are some countries who have never hosted one. Indeed, we withdrew our bid for 2014 to allow Argentina to host unopposed, as it was too good an opportunity to miss having an international congress in South America. Rest assured, however, that we will not be withdrawing this time – we only get one opportunity to celebrate our 75th anniversary, and want to extend this to our international colleagues and friends.” The IHEEM President says the Institute is keen to ensure that the Congress has ‘a UK feel’. He said: “We will be including complementary events, technical visits, and social gatherings, to allow our international visitors every opportunity to explore all that the UK health sector can offer. Branches have already been challenged to generate ideas, and to offer to host these additional events, and we have been very encouraged by the response. Wouldn’t it be great to offer additional activities across as many UK IHEEM branches as possible?”
