FEATURE ARTICLES

Having worked in the parking sector for nearly a decade, Leighton Ponting now spearheads the business development of Open Parking, a specialist parking management operation which claims to deploy ‘cutting edge and proven technologies to maximise customer experience and improve compliance around major public facilities’.

In this article, the third in a series on the new ISO 55000 asset management standards (see also HEJ – October 2014 and February 2015), Kevin Main, marketing director for asset management solutions learning consultancy, Asset Wisdom, and June Lancaster, a learning expert with years of experience of learning in the healthcare sector, describe “how the asset management challenge calls on facilities management companies and other suppliers to the healthcare sector to become ‘learning organisations’”, and how this has been achieved by Sodexo, ‘and can be done by others’.

Looking ahead to the healthcare challenges facing the next government, Conor Ellis, head of healthcare at built asset consultancy, EC Harris, argues, in a personal viewpoint, that ‘more commercial’ business case returns on investment, better commercial and FM delivery, and more strategic thought on project engagement ahead of procurement, should be among the priorities if the NHS is to continue to provide the standard of care for which it is world-renowned while operating efficiently and within tight budgets.

Having, on leaving school, completed a mining engineering apprenticeship, and later managed one of England’s biggest coalmining complexes, Essentia CEO, Steve McGuire, spent 10 years in senior estates and facilities roles with the forerunner to today’s Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, before being recruited in 2003 by London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust to head its estates and facilities function.

In an article that first appeared in the Spring 2015 issue of Canadian Healthcare Facilities, Mark Berest, a principal at B+H Architects, and Carol Ringer, a clinical design consultant with WR Consulting Group, explain why Ontario’s new St Catharines Hospital, which opened two years ago, is considered one of Canada’s most advanced hospital designs when it comes to infection prevention and control.

One year on from the publication of the Health and Safety Executive’s HSG 274 Part 2 guidelines on controlling Legionella bacteria in hot and cold water systems, Carole Armstrong, marketing manager at Delabie UK, considers three point-of-use anti-scalding technologies that help to control the risk of scalding in environments with low, intermediate and high levels of risk to patients, staff, and visitors. She also considers different solutions suggested by the guidelines for reducing bacterial contamination while minimising the risk of scalding.

The 2015 Design in Mental Health (DIMH) Conference, Exhibition & Dinner takes place this month at the National Motorcycle Museum, Solihull.

In an article first published in the Spring 2015 issue of Canadian Healthcare Facilities, the magazine’s editor, Clare Tattersall, describes a project which is seeing undertaken one of the largest healthcare redevelopments in Ontario, as the new ‘campus-style’ 457 inpatient-bedded Oakville Hospital takes shape prior to a scheduled opening later this year.

Very close proximity to existing hospital buildings, managing the craning of 31 sizeable off-site built modules and eight large air-handling unit sections onto site without disrupting hospital traffic or operations, and the need to complete the new building to an extremely tight schedule, were among the challenges successfully met by MTX Contracts recently during its completion of a new ‘dementia-friendly’ 30-bed decant ward at Walsall Manor Hospital in the West Midlands.

Chris Norris from Siniat, a frequent supplier of plasterboard for NHS projects, looks at the estates challenges facing the service, and how good building material choices can directly impact on patient outcomes.

According to specialist in optimised resource management, Veolia, combined heat and power (CHP) ‘has been proven for its effectiveness in reducing carbon emissions, thanks to the efficient way that the technology simultaneously derives power and heat from the combustion process’.

In 2013 Peter Sellars, head of Profession for Estates & Facilities Policy at the Department of Health, successfully bid for £50 million from the Treasury to help finance a range of ‘spend-to-save’ energy efficiency initiatives across the NHS in England. In all 117 energy efficiency projects were initiated across 48 English NHS organisations – funded through a dedicated NHS Energy Efficiency Fund.

Electrical engineering and estates personnel at Sodexo – which manages a wide range of soft and hard facilities management services for five hospitals under a PFI contract at the Manchester Royal Infirmary – have successfully planned, managed, and co-ordinated, a complex electrical engineering project which saw high voltage (HV) switchgear in the site’s main intake sub-station dismantled by the supplier to repair a potential earthing mechanism fault which would have prevented individual switchgear panels being shut down, to, for example, cater for renovation of electrical cabling or components cross the site’s high voltage network.

Few beds, one would imagine, could withstand three-quarters of a ton landing on them, but this was the challenge successfully met by a box bed from a furniture manufacturer for challenging behaviour environments, Tough Furniture, when, to reassure a customer that the bed could accommodate 30-stone patients, 13 of the company’s staff jumped repeatedly on it to ensure that it would survive intact in a real-world setting. Such testing may seem extreme, but is vital, since much of the company’s furniture is destined for environments where patients will abuse, and indeed attempt to destroy, components.

Bioliquid is often overlooked by organisations when they look to reduce carbon emissions by moving heating or power generation away from fossil fuels to ‘renewables’.

As flooring specialist, Gerflor, marks over 60 years supplying the healthcare sector, Virginia Harris, the company’s Scottish sales and specification executive, takes a look at some of the recent trends in healthcare flooring, where attractive aesthetics, sustainability, a hard-wearing and robust construction, and cleaning and infection control considerations, are among the key criteria on specifiers’ lists. She also considers the crossover between design and new product development.

David Green, AIA, principal at the London offices of Perkins+Will, and Basak Alkan, AICP, LEED AP / healthcare district planner, at the architect, interior, and urban design company’s Atlanta, US base, examine growing moves in the US to re-evaluate planning policies to ensure that local environments are built that promote healthy activities, with the creation of so-called ‘Health Districts’.

The NHS is costing the taxpayer 2.5 times more than it did 50 years ago. Now accounting for 8.2 per cent of the UK’s GDP, this trend is set to continue, but funding is not in place to support it. The Government faces a struggle between what is needed and what is affordable, pointing to a complete re-think of the way care is delivered. So says Steve Peak, business development director for Vanguard Healthcare, As the 2015 General Election brings the issue into sharper focus, he examines how estates managers are responding to the pressures and the practicalities of delivering the infrastructure to support a new model of care.

With the Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012, which actually came into effect on 1 January 2014 in Scotland, requiring all the country’s healthcare facilities to separate their waste for recycling, waste management consultants, Jess Twemlow and Dr Adam Read of Ricardo-AEA, consider what healthcare facilities south of the border can learn from Scotland’s experience about improved waste management and resource efficiency.

Writing on behalf of the Building & Engineering Services Association (B&ES), Ewen Rose, an experienced journalist specialising in building engineering services, reports on a number of presentations at October’s IHEEM Healthcare Estates 2014 conference where the focus was very much on how healthcare estates and facilities and healthcare engineering teams can save energy and cut carbon emissions through more efficient monitoring, and, if necessary, subsequent adjustment, of key HVAC plant.