FEATURE ARTICLES

With waiting lists remaining at historically high levels, healthcare providers need to urgently build capacity at pace. Simon Squirrell, national sales director at Vanguard Healthcare Solutions, explains how volumetric construction with high pre-manufactured value is transforming healthcare estates.

Utility enabling works are the unseen foundations of major hospital redevelopment. Here, Leon Stefanski, senior project manager in the New QEH Design and Construction team at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn, explores how early-stage infrastructure, multidisciplinary coordination, and cross-team collaboration shape the success of complex NHS transformation programmes.

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.

Across the UK and internationally, a recurring requirement is appearing within critical medical equipment specifications: a maximum supply of 3 per cent voltage total harmonic distortion (THDv). This limit is consistently referenced in advanced MRI systems, radiotherapy linear accelerators, digital imaging platforms, and other precision clinical technologies. Understanding this limit – and its implications – is vital for safe, efficient equipment operation. Here, John Mitchell, global sales and marketing director at CP Automation, and independent power management consultant Steve Young MIET, explain why, in healthcare and medical facilities, 3 per cent THDv matters.

Nigel Thomas, national specification and project sales manager at ABB Electrification, discusses the ways in which implementing BMS can expose healthcare estates to critical vulnerabilities, and explains how estates teams can implement the correct cybersecurity safeguards.

Evidence suggests that LEDs might be causing harm to our cells – meaning that the health of the population is being adversely affected by spending lots of time indoors without daily exposure to daylight or full spectrum lighting. However, there are measures that designers and facilities managers can take to improve the situation, as Lorraine Calcott, director and principal designer at it does Lighting Ltd, explains.

Despite it being almost eight years since the issuing of the Hackitt report, its key recommendations remain largely unimplemented. This is particularly true in healthcare settings, where meaningful progress has been limited. As a result, legislation may now be needed to enforce change. In this article, Dr Manjula Meda, Dr Michael Weinbren, and health engineer George McCracken provide real life illustrations of why projects go wrong, and how simple solutions such as identifying risks at the inception of a project would make future hospitals radically safer, as well as saving significant sums of money.

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.