FEATURE ARTICLES

Alan Wilson, managing director of ModuleCo Healthcare (MCH), a provider of modular healthcare buildings in the UK, explains how – with budgets especially tight – modular construction, utilising a usage-based revenue agreement solution, enables NHS Trusts to ‘access state-of-the-art healthcare facilities without the huge capital investments typically required’.

International healthcare consultancy, MJ Medical, is helping a local community bring healthcare to its high street. By refurbishing a derelict supermarket in Helston, it hopes to bring life into the Cornish town, and show what can be achieved across the UK, as director, Kieren Morgan reports.

With around 6.5 million people on NHS waiting lists in England, and a limiting factor in reducing this list a lack of space for consultations and procedures, plus a longer-term trend in the NHS and globally towards delivering more healthcare outside hospital settings, Smriti Singh, MD of Symbi Consulting, and Jacqui Baxter, a director at View 10D, argue that repurposing existing vacant local authority properties for healthcare provides a solution which helps both financially challenged councils, and the NHS.

Addressing delegates from across the healthcare engineering and estate management sector in a morning keynote at the IHEEM Wales Regional Conference at the ICC Wales in May, Stuart Douglas, Director of NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership – Specialist Estates Services, focused on some of the key priorities to ensure that Wales has a fit-for-purpose healthcare estate. Areas covered included the need to make the optimal use of under- or unused buildings and land, the challenges of reaching Net Zero, and some of the existing and emerging tools for better managing the over two million square metres of space that currently make up the country’s NHS estate.

Nearly 250 guests from across the healthcare engineering, estate management, and healthcare construction sectors gathered in the Augusta Suite at the Celtic Manor Golf Club on 7 May for a Gala Awards Dinner on the first night of the IHEEM Wales Regional Conference and Exhibition 2025, held at the Celtic Manor Resort Hotel near Newport. There, as HEJ’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports, they were able to network, witness the presentation of seven awards, hear about the work of local children’s charity, Sparkle, and enjoy a wry and retrospective after-dinner speech by Sir Gareth Edwards CBE, arguably Wales’s greatest ever rugby scrum-half.

Alex Warren, an associate director at The Manser Practice, an award-winning architectural firm specialising in healthcare design, discusses the positive impact that good interior design, signage, and wayfinding, can make in a range of healthcare facilities, for patients, staff, and visitors alike.

We breathe, on average, 12 times per minute, 720 times per hour, and 17,280 times a day, but how do we know that our healthcare buildings are safe and healthy when it comes to air quality? Renée Jacobs, Healthcare Business Development manager at Distech Controls, discusses the importance of good indoor air quality, and some of the steps that can be taken to maintain healthy indoor environments for all users of such facilities using ‘integrated systems and connected technology’.

As one of the largest real estate owners in the UK, the NHS is under pressure to optimise its assets’ health and reduce its carbon footprint. Like many NHS facilities, St George’s Hospital in south London must deliver adequate clinical services, efficiently. After securing sustainability funds, the hospital’s team enlisted multiple specialists to help it improve consumption and asset performance. Dave Lister, a Healthcare Solutions specialist at monitoring solutions integrator, IAconnects, explains how the hospital embraced environmental monitoring.

Mark Roberts, UK Public Sector director at Jaggaer, takes a look at the potential impact on the healthcare sector of the Procurement Act 2023, which came into force in February, and outlines technology’s role in, for example, complying with the new requirement to continuously monitor supplier performance and ethical behaviour throughout a contract’s lifecycle.

As architects, specifiers, and Estates and Facilities managers work to ensure the safety of hospital staff, patients, and visitors, passive fire protection measures (such as fire-resistant glass) can play a vital role. Faced with balancing functionality, wellbeing, design, and safety, demanding more from your fire safety glass specifications is essential, says Andy Lake, Sales director, UK & Ireland, at Pyroguard – a specialist in the manufacture of such glass.

In this ‘Q&A’-style article, James Weber, Marketing manager at SFG20, the UK industry standard for building maintenance, talks to Mathew Houghton, IT lead for Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, to understand how – as the latter puts it – he got back an entire working day per week of time savings using SFG20 content and software.

Harm Hollander, a practising Australian architect who has driven the design and procurement teams of major hospital projects around Australia and internationally, Oystein Tronstad, Physiotherapy clinical lead at The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane, and an experienced ICU clinician and researcher, and architect and clinical planner, Angelo Pagano, describe a research project undertaken at the Brisbane hospital which has looked to improve ICU bed bay environments through a variety of measures – from mitigating unwanted noise and incorporating distractive ceiling panels, to enhancing indoor air quality. The scheme was the subject of a post-occupancy evaluation.

Given the ongoing need for healthcare providers to balance form with function when it comes to interior furnishings, surfaces are one such area where estate stakeholders can make efficiency gains, while also ensuring cleanability, antimicrobial protection, and durability, in line with rigorous standards. George Emms, Specification leader, UK & Ireland, at Wilsonart, sets out some of key considerations when specifying surfaces for the modern healthcare estate.

Con McGarry, Senior consultant and Solution lead for Digital x Healthcare* at Arcadis, discusses how – against a backdrop where many healthcare organisations worldwide are determining how they move closer to a digital technology-enabled future – the journey from concept to actual implementation remains challenging. He advocates ‘an approach that goes beyond technology acquisition’, using a Strategic Technology Roadmap ‘rooted in understanding the distinct challenges that an organisation faces and quantifying them’.

David George, an Authorising Engineer (AE), Mechanical, at Eta Projects with over 30 years’ experience of high-risk Safe Systems of Work (electrical, mechanical, petroleum, confined spaces), and 19 years’ experience as an AE, and a Co-ordinating Authorising Engineer and trainer in the development of Safe Systems of Work, debates some of the issues around the requirement for a formal mechanical SSoW for the healthcare estate.

Peter Gunn, a Senior consultant at the Water Hygiene Centre, discuses the priorities for those working in engineering and estate management and clinical roles in private sector healthcare settings whose role includes responsibility for keeping their facility’s water system in a safe and compliant condition. He focuses particularly on the key steps to minimise the chances of Legionella growth and proliferation – as set out in HSE and Department of Health and Social Care guidance.

Mott MacDonald’s Modern Methods of Construction and healthcare specialists, Ben Carlisle and Andrew Parks, and the business’s Industrialised Design and Construction director, Trudi Sully, believe that industrialisation of design and construction methods could reduce costs at every lifecycle stage of healthcare facilities, as well as improve the quality of patient care. The firm’s managing editor, Claire Smith, spoke to them to find out more.

Architect, Martín Bentolila, of a|sh Sander Hofrichter Architekten in Hannover, argues that while technology has enabled the development of new treatments, and can significantly improve patient care and optimise time management in hospital settings, it is crucial that its adoption is not purely driven by commercial benefits, but rather responds to real need and enhances the quality of care.

Hiroshi Yasuhara, President of the Healthcare Engineering Association of Japan (HEAJ), discusses a study undertaken with the participation of 257 of the country’s hospitals into some of the key infrastructural and other adaptations they made to address a surge in patient numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In March 2024 Smriti Singh – who has over 20 years’ experience providing strategic advice and delivering change and transformation programmes in the health and care sector, founded a strategic healthcare consultancy, Symbi Consulting – of which she is managing director. Here she, James Philipps, experienced architect and founder of architectural practice, Philipps & Co, and Neil Kukreja, a Medical Director and consultant surgeon, explore the key part clinical engagement can play in making new healthcare developments ‘more effective and more efficient’.