Consulting engineer Malcolm Thomas provides an overview of considerations that relate to the design and layout of isolation rooms.

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’.

Alex Krasnic BEng MSc MIOA, senior acoustician at ZBP Acoustics, the acoustics division of consulting engineer, Zisman Bowyer & Partners, explores practical steps towards achieving ‘the quiet hospital’ without compromising other design elements, while also recognising that acoustic design features can sometimes be seen to conflict with certain healthcare protocols.

With energy efficiency and carbon reduction, and the importance of a relaxing, therapeutic patient environment, ever more in the spotlight, LED lighting’s proponents claim the technology offers healthcare estates personnel many of the answers on both fronts.

Paul Boocock, director of estates and facilities management at the South Devon Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, explains how he and Jonathan Gilmore, a director at not-for-profit healthcare sector improvement organisation, BIRCH, and the Collaborative Working Centre, with wide-ranging experience in the construction and EFM sectors.

Paul Boocock, director of estates and facilities management at the South Devon Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, explains how he and Jonathan Gilmore, a director at not-for-profit healthcare sector improvement organisation, BIRCH, and the Collaborative Working Centre.

Growing demand for a wide range of surgical procedures, coupled with a strong belief in the advantages – both to surgeons and patients – of minimally invasive robot-assisted surgery, have seen the Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust open a new twin operating theatre suite, equipped with the Midlands’ first da Vinci surgical robot, at Wolverhampton’s New Cross Hospital.

An informed look at the challenges around fire safety in hospitals and other healthcare facilities.

With the onus on healthcare providers and their staff to protect patients against all elements of ‘avoidable harm’ perhaps never greater, Gwen Walker, a highly experienced infection prevention control nurse specialist, and David Williams, MD of Approved Air, who has 30 years’ experience in validation and verification of ventilation and ultraclean ventilation systems, examine changing requirements for, and trends in, operating theatre ventilation.

Mike Hilditch, managing director of auctioneers, Hilditch Group, which has extensive experience in selling equipment on behalf of the NHS, advises, via a seven-step guide, on some of the key elements for estates and facilities teams to consider to ensure that site clearances both go to plan and reap maximum financial reward, including safeguarding potentially valuable ‘kit’ against opportunist thieves, and preventing confidential paperwork falling into the wrong hands.

This month’s 11th national Health Estates & Facilities Management Association (HEFMA) conference and exhibition, being staged with a strongly “green” approach, will focus on the evolving face of UK healthcare and its impact on estates and facilities services, examining how estates and facilities managers can respond to changing patient and business expectations. Health Estate Journal reports.

Gary Sowerby Eur.Ing. C.Eng. M.E.I., who runs JGS Associates and is the author of the Process Steam Guide, provides an in-depth analysis of steam distribution system problems and solutions.

Tom Makin BSc Hons, MWMSoc, discusses a pilot study at a large teaching hospital comparing the efficacy of the Medi-Shower silver impregnated showerhead and hose with fixed and adjustable showerheads in a healthcare environment.

Dr Susanne Surman-Lee, and George McCracken, head of Estates Risk and Environment at Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, take an in-depth look at some of the challenges and complexities of maintaining safe and hygienic healthcare water systems.

As part of the wider NHS drive towards ‘Net Zero Carbon’, NHS Trusts across England must now create, develop, monitor, and report to their Board at least annually, on progress with a Green Plan.

Dr Tim Sandle, a chartered biologist with a first-class honours degree in Applied Biology and a Masters degree in education, who obtained his doctorate from Keele University, and is an honorary tutor with the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Manchester, discusses some of the key considerations when choosing from the plethora of different cleaning and disinfection products available for use in hospitals and other healthcare facilities.

With the UK currently not ‘on track’ to achieve the fourth or fifth carbon reduction targets introduced under the Climate Change Act, Stephen Lowndes, Technical director at the Carbon & Energy Fund discusses.

Spirotech, the specialist supplier of deaerators and dirt separators for heating and cooling systems, examines how effective deaeration and dirt separation can control and significantly improve system water quality.

NHS Trust boards’ growing demands for major capital purchases to offer both short-term “added value”, and sound longer-term ROI, coupled with estates and facilities teams’ growing involvement in specifying, installing, and subsequently maintaining, the sophisticated equipment and control systems found in modern-day operating theatres, have meant a radical re-think in approach to winning new business for Trumpf Medical Systems.

Ricardo Codinhoto, researcher fellow, Patricia Tzortzopoulos, PhD academic fellow, and Mike Kagioglou, director, Salford Centre for Research and Innovation, The University of Salford, and Duane Passman, 3Ts programme director, Brighton & Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, examine the background and history to, and advantages and disadvantages of, evidence-based design in healthcare.