Seminar event celebrates innovation and heritage

Around 70 Institute members, Past-Presidents, Committee members, Company Affiliates, and healthcare estates and facilities/healthcare engineering personnel from across the UK attended a special IHEEM event in Westminster on 30 November. Held at Central Hall Westminster, just off Parliament Square, the afternoon and evening event combined a varied and informative seminar programme with a mid-term update by IHEEM President, Pete Sellars, on progress with his five key themes, and the presentation of a key IHEEM Award and three Honorary Fellowships. HEJ editor, Jonathan, Baillie, reports.

The title of the Westminster event, ‘Heritage, Innovation & The Membership Balance’, was entirely appropriate, given that it took place just a month before the start of the Institute’s 75th anniversary year. The broad range of seminar presentations reflected the changing challenges for healthcare engineers and estates managers in the period since IHEEM’s foundation in 1943, and looked forward to how the Institute can continue to make strides as the leading UK body for such professionals while extending its appeal to a wider audience.

The afternoon’s proceedings opened with a short welcome by IHEEM’s CEO, Julian Amey, who thanked all those present for attending, and expressed the Institute’s gratitude to Company Affiliates, Drax Technology and Salix Finance, for sponsoring the event. He then handed over to the first speaker, Conor Ellis, who is head of Health and a Partner at cost management and quantity surveying, project management, and advisory services specialist, Rider Levett Bucknall. Conor Ellis spoke on ‘Using commercial tools to deliver the five-year vision of capital and revenue efficiency’. Julian Amey explained that the RLB speaker has some 25 years’ healthcare experience, having worked on over 125 projects with a capital value of more than £12 billion.