RECENT NEWS

Researchers at the University of Cambridge are using microencapsulation technologies developed by Dolomite Microfluidics to develop ‘self-healing’ construction materials.

Architectural product specialist, Hunter Douglas Architectural, has supplied its leading solid wood linear ceiling for a new £40 million hospital in London that has replaced buildings dating back to the Second World War.

Spire Healthcare has installed Vernacare’s ‘innovative new’ Vernacare Compact single-use toileting and cleansing waste disposal technology at its newly refurbished extended recovery unit at Spire Norwich Hospital.

Static Systems Group has been awarded the contract to supply and install nurse call systems and bedhead services trunking at the new £350 million Grange University Hospital in South Wales, designed by architects, BDP.

Confirmation of the extra £20.5 billion more in ‘real-terms’ annual funding for the NHS by 2023-2024 announced last June – including at least £2 billion annually for mental health, and an end to the current PFI model, were among the notable elements impacting on health and social care in Chancellor Philip Hammond’s 2018 Budget Speech delivered on 29 October.

Eric Wright Health and Care, working in partnership with Wigan Council and Wigan Borough Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), has commenced the construction of a new £4 million health centre in Ashton in Makerfield, Wigan, in Greater Manchester, on the site of the former town hall.

More NHS patients will be cared for at home and in their community to avoid them going into or staying in hospital unnecessarily, the Prime Minister, Theresa May, has announced, as she pledged to cut ‘needless’ hospital admissions and help inpatients return home sooner – through community-based ‘rapid response teams’, and dedicated support for care home residents.

Eastwood Park, the long-established engineering, estates, and facilities management training centre, this year celebrates 50 years of delivering training.

The Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, a ‘world-class’ biological research facility that conducts studies into the basic biology of cancer, has streamlined maintenance of its steam systems with the help of Spirax Sarco, in the process ‘mitigating outstanding risk’ and freeing up in-house resource within its Facilities team to focus on other activities.

The NHS Long Term Plan, launched on 7 January, sets out how the £20.5 billion budget settlement for the NHS, announced by the Prime Minister last summer, will be spent over the next five years, and includes measures to prevent 150,000 heart attacks, strokes, and dementia cases, as well as to provide better access to mental health services for adults and children.

Hospitals across England are delivering 81 projects to provide improvements this winter using money from a £420 million Winter Fund.

A new publication from BSRIA – Building Services Analytics – BG 75/2018 – is designed to raises awareness and provide guidance to building owners and all those involved in the design, construction, and operation of buildings and building services on how the correct capture and analysis of data can be used to drive improvement in building performance.

The first phase of plans to transform the King’s Hall heritage site in south Belfast to a Health and Wellbeing Campus has been granted approval by Belfast City Council.

A leading authority for asbestos training provision in the UK, the UK Asbestos Training Association (UKATA), is urging all public sector employees – including those in NHS hospitals – to be ‘asbestos-aware’ in order to better manage what it dubs ‘the ‘ticking time-bomb’ in thousands of public buildings.

A ‘hard-hitting report’ from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Select Committee has backed the building engineering industry’s calls for tougher action on late payment.

The £9.4 million National Garden Scheme (NGS) Macmillan Unit at Chesterfield Royal Hospital has been officially opened by the Duke of Gloucester, with Mott MacDonald delivering multidisciplinary engineering services on ‘one of the UK’s first centres to provide truly holistic cancer care and support in one unit’.

St Bartholomew’s, a former hospital in Rochester, has been sold to MCR Property Group for redevelopment, raising funds for reinvestment into the NHS estate and freeing up land for more local homes to be built.

Speaking on the 25th Anniversary of the Specialist Engineering Contractors’ (SEC) Group, the Group’s chairman, Trevor Hursthouse OBE, called for the setting up of a statutory authority to regulate industry practice.

More NHS patients will be cared for at home and in their community to avoid them going into or staying in hospital unnecessarily, Prime Minister, Theresa May, has announced, as she pledged to cut ‘needless’ hospital admissions and help inpatients return home sooner – through community-based ‘rapid response teams’ and dedicated support for care home residents.

In a move that it says will allow an additional 1,000 people suffering with cancer to receive ‘world-class cancer care’ closer to home, GenesisCare has announced that building work has started on a £12 m expansion to create ‘a stateof-the-art’ cancer imaging and treatment centre’, GenesisCare, Oxford.