On the eve of this year’s Healthcare Estates conference and exhibition, Jonathan Baillie, the Editor of the IHEEM monthly magazine, Health Estate Journal, caught up in Manchester with IHEEM’s outgoing President, Alison Ryan, Deputy Healthcare Lead at Mott MacDonald, and her successor as President, Nigel Keery OBE, who in his ‘day job’ is Head of Estates Operations at the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust.
In a recorded interview, Alison reflected on a busy and interesting two years as the Institute’s first female President. Perhaps most notably, she has made a considerable impact in championing careers for women in engineering, and on the equality and diversity agenda, and has also undertaken valuable STEM work in schools and colleges to encourage young people into healthcare engineering and estate management careers when they leave school.
IHEEM’s new President, Nigel Keery, who took over from Alison at today’s 2024 IHEEM AGM, overseas a sizeable NHS estates and facilities team at one of Europe’s biggest public healthcare provider organisations. Having followed his father, grandfather, and an uncle into engineering on leaving school, he gained his initial training during an 11-year stint at Belfast’s famous shipbuilder, Harland and Wolff, before moving into healthcare in 1987, when he joined Belfast Health and Social Care Trust as a Works Officer. He has been employed in the NHS ever since, never losing his passion for engineering, and – he told Jonathan in a separate on-camera interview – has particularly enjoyed meeting the wide range of individuals he has encountered along the way.
