FEATURE ARTICLES

Following a busy day of networking, keynotes, and meeting with exhibitors, delegates to the IHEEM Wales Regional Conference 2026 made their way to the Celtic Manor Resort Hotel for the 2026 IHEEM Wales Regional Awards presentation.

On 6-7 May, IHEEM, with the Welsh Branch and NHS Wales, Shared Services Partnership, Specialist Estates Services, held its annual Wales Regional Conference at ICC Wales. This year, the event explored solutions for building resilient healthcare estates, managing ageing infrastructure to reduce the risk of critical system failures, and improving resilience and response to outages and emergencies – topics discussed in a conference keynote delivered by Jacqueline Totterdell, director general for health and social services and NHS Wales chief executive. HEJ editor Matt Seex reports.

At Starkstrom’s state-of-the-art demonstration and training facility, the latest vital infrastructure and new technologies can be explored, touched, and configured – helping to visualise and optimise the operating theatres of the future.

Sponsored story. For NHS and private healthcare estates teams, roofing failure is rarely just a maintenance issue. Water ingress can disrupt clinical environments, delay operations, damage critical infrastructure, and place additional pressure on already stretched estates departments.

Steve Heape, chair of IHEEM’s Environmental and Sustainability Advisory Panel, speaks with Andy Yates of the Carbon and Energy Fund and Rob Hilliard of Vital Energi, drawing on their substantial experience delivering energy, mechanical, and Net Zero infrastructure in operational NHS environments. Together, they explore what trusts can – and should – be doing to prepare existing estates for low-carbon heat technologies, including how early estate preparation and critical backlog investment can be aligned to make future Net Zero solutions deliverable, affordable, and resilient.

At Healthcare Estates 2025, Sam Vijatov of Innovation Fire Engineering interviewed Paul Mathews, director at Murphy Philipps Architects, winner of the 2025 Healthcare Estates Architectural Practice of the Year Award.

Andrew Steel, managing director of Airmec Essential Services, outlines the critical importance of fire dampers and in keeping these devices fully maintained and compliant, especially in healthcare facilities.

Timo Ohtonen, managing director and owner of the Finnish health tech company PPO-Elektroniikka Oy, and Gopa Kumar, National President of the National Federation of Engineers for Electrical Safety, discuss the continuing importance of electrical safety within Group 2 healthcare facilities, with reference to examples in India and Ukraine.

MTX Contracts has officially broken ground at Wycombe Hospital and Llantrisant Health Park – two transformative healthcare developments which are the latest in a string of projects delivering new facilities and improved patient care across the UK.

From community diagnostic centres to emergency critical care facilities, each come with differences in scale and setting, but they all share one defining factor: effective contract management. With small missteps on site potentially affecting thousands of lives, Simon Hunt, strategic account director at Sypro, discusses how structured oversight, collaboration, and digital tools enable hospitals to be delivered safely on time and within budget.

Bringing together sector experts and leaders, IHEEM’s Wales Regional Conference, Exhibition and Gala Awards Dinner, and Northern Ireland Conference, will offer delegates the opportunity to learn from a range of experts about the challenges facing healthcare estates, as well as celebrate innovation and success at two star-studded awards dinners. Here, Health Estate Journal picks some upcoming conference highlights.

At Healthcare Estates 2025, Honeywell’s Tony Sinden interviewed Simon Boundy and Jakub Raspl of Stride Treglown Architects, winners of the 2025 Healthcare Estates Refurbishment Project Of The Year Award. They discussed the methodology behind – and challenges presented by – an extensive refurbishment project at Bigbury Orthopaedic Surgical Suite for University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust.

A ground-breaking turnkey healthcare project shows how an engineered approach can improve resilience while reducing operational and compliance risk. The project delivered a future-proof hospital that transforms both the delivery of patient care and the management of its electrical infrastructure.

While NHS Trusts and the UK healthcare sector await further clarity on the government’s plans for Public Private Partnerships (PPP) to finance new hospital developments, MTX Contracts Ltd continues to refine its own managed services solution to deliver new healthcare facilities without the requirement for challenging capital funding provision. Here, managing director David Hartley explains why it is proving a preferred option for so many Trust boards.

The use of temporary care environments presents a system-wide challenge for NHS Trusts. Here, Peter Harris, managing director of Micad by SINGU, outlines the advantages of using a connected estates and facilities platform when it comes to making decisions about space, safety, and patient care.

Despite their importance to both the NHS and the public sector more widely, many sustainability and Net Zero projects fail to get past the drawing board. To discover why some of these projects succeed while others stall, Steve Heape, leader of Project Development at the Carbon and Energy Fund (CEF), spoke with two leading experts in the sustainability space.

Failing to comply with emergency lighting regulations endangers a building’s occupants, while putting owners and occupying organisations at risk of significant penalties. Yet a lack of knowledge around emergency lighting regulations means breaches remain all too common, especially in the healthcare sector, says Liam Greene, emergency lighting product manager at Thorlux Lighting.

Immersive practical training facilities have become the foundational bedrock of healthcare estate engineering. Gemma Bolton, marketing executive at PPL Training, explains why instilling the requisite competence and cognitive confidence is necessary to safeguard both the infrastructure and the professional integrity of the certified individual.

Alexandra Davis, mechanical associate at Whitecode Consulting, highlights how mechanical and electrical (M&E) design should be incorporated into decision-making.

At Healthcare Estates 2025, Hannah Lewis-Jones, business development lead for Mott MacDonald interviewed Xav Roberts, associate director at Murphy Phillips Architects, about Hellesdon Mental Health Facility, winner of the 2025 Healthcare Estates New Build Project of the Year Award. Roberts shared insight into the vision for the project, the challenges of delivering an innovative mental health facility, the role of collaboration and stakeholder engagement, and the practical lessons that can be applied across the healthcare estate sector.