Two new members – Derek Chaplin and Mark Richards – have been elected to the IHEEM Council. Derek Chaplin has recently retired from his role as head of Estate Services and chief engineer at the Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust, having progressed through various posts, including hospital engineer and works manager, to this last full-time position.
He began his career by completing an indentured student apprenticeship with cable maker Pirelli-General, and studying mechanical engineering, before a gap year with VSO in Jamaica teaching aspiring millwrights. After subsequently joining the Wessex Regional Hospital Board scheme for trainee hospital engineers, he studied Building, and attended the IHospE/NHS Estates ‘Keele courses’ for management training. A staunch IHEEM Southern Branch member (he has twice been Secretary), he achieved his C.Eng after studying for the CIBSE examinations, and, aged 50, gained an MBA from the OU Business School. He has recently joined IHEEM’s Conference & Exhibition Committee. Mark Richards completed a Professional Engineering Apprenticeship with the CEGB, and continued to work there for several years, before joining Nottinghamshire County Council as an electrical design engineer, where he gained a degree in Integrated Engineering at Nottingham Trent University that enabled him to join the IET, and obtain his CEng. He later became the County Council’s principal planning supervisor, and a regional committee member of the Association of Project Safety. Following 20 years’ local government and construction experience, he joined TAD Architects to head up TAD Facilities Management as an Authorising Engineer, and TAD Project Safety as a CDM coordinator. After joining IHEEM shortly afterwards, he was soon asked to join the East Midlands Committee. He will also chair the IHEEM Electrical Technical Platform.
