Ensuring a long life for the future’s healthcare buildings

 He took a look both at some of the major initiatives in hand in Northern Ireland to reduce the carbon impact of healthcare buildings and the estate – including during construction work, and at the need for tomorrow’s healthcare facilities to be both sufficiently adaptable for changing clinical models, and resilient to climate change. 

By way of a brief introduction, Brendan Smyth explained that he is Director of Health Projects – ‘formerly known as Health Estates’, which is now part of Construction and Procurement Delivery in Northern Ireland’s Department of Finance. He said: “We were formerly within the Department of Health in Northern Ireland, and work exclusively for it.” He told delegates that having attended the conference’s first day, he had found the presentations ‘both very informative, and thought-provoking’. It had been great to hear about the initiatives taking place, and he was sure his team could ‘learn from and borrow’ some of the work that has been done. “I’ve had the opportunity, up until a couple of years ago,” he explained, “of regular exchanges with my colleagues in HSE, and have always found them very forthcoming in terms of knowledge and willingness to share information for the greater good.” He also thanked another speaker, Erin Savage of the Energy Strategy Department for The Economy, who spoke immediately before him, for her ‘very comprehensive outline of what’s happening in Government circles in Northern Ireland’. Despite him being ‘part of that organisation in the wider sense’, he said there was ‘a lot of activity happening that he hadn’t been aware of’.

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