Jane Southworth, senior associate, environment group, and Michael Conroy Harris, senior legal manager, construction group, at international law firm Eversheds, consider the key steps NHS Trusts need to take to prepare to forthcoming Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) scheme, and question what drivers currently exist to encourage delivery of healthcare buildings that play their part in carbon reduction.

Many medicines can be destroyed by storage and transportation at the wrong temperature. Joe Fudge, service manager at ABB Measurement Products, examines how proper monitoring supports best practice.

The Department of Health (DH), Defra, and the Department for Transport, have recently announced the publication of the second edition of the Safe management of healthcare waste manual (known as Health Technical Memorandum 07-01).

Graeme Dunn, an Authorising Engineer (MGPS) who is based at WS Atkins’ Glasgow office, explains the key safety and other practical considerations when supplying medical gas pipeline systems into training facilities.

A physical security breach in a healthcare facility can have serious consequences for staff, patients, and the general public, especially if that breach occurs in a high risk area, such as a server room, pharmaceutical storage unit, or radiological room. Here, Mike McColl, managing director of high security panel manufacturer, Securiclad, highlights the importance of a ‘last line of defence’ when protecting both people, and a wide range of equipment and ‘assets’, in healthcare facilities.

In our latest ‘technical guidance’ article, Richard Clarke, sales and marketing director at one of the UK’s leading lift and escalator specialists, Schindler, examines some of the key issues surrounding the specification, maintenance, and operation of lifts in hospitals to help ensure the highest standards of safety and reliability.

In our latest ‘technical guidance’ article, Richard Clarke, sales and marketing director at one of the UK’s leading lift and escalator specialists, Schindler, examines some of the key issues surrounding the specification, maintenance, and operation of lifts in hospitals to help ensure the highest standards of safety and reliability.

In a year when, with the inception of the new Clinical Commissioning Groups, the way that healthcare is procured and delivered will see radical changes, this month’s HefmA 2013 National Conference & Exhibition will have as its theme, ‘Many Players, One Goal: The Patient’.

Since 1 February this year, under the EU’s Biocidal Products Directive, it has been illegal to sell or use water treatment systems that use elemental copper, a practice employed historically by a significant number of UK healthcare facilities to combat Legionella.

As the dissolution of the PCTs draws closer, and the assets and buildings formerly owned by them transfer, at the start of April, to the new NHS Property Services Company (see also HEJ – February 2013), there remains a considerable amount to be done by those involved in the real estate aspects of the NHS reorganisation.

Claire Bradford, project director at SHAPE (the Strategic Health Asset Planning and Evaluation iniatitive), outlines the many benefits available to estates and facilities teams via the web-enabled, evidence-based application.

In a previous article, in the September 2010 edition of Health Estate Journal, “Is multi-million pound backlog a reality”, independent consultant to the healthcare sector, Dr Melvyn Langford, highlighted what he claimed was a “fundamental flaw” in the way the established NHS “5 x 5 criticality grid” used to assess the urgency of backlog maintenance had been interpreted for many years by estates personnel, resulting, he said, in one Trust with a reported £12 million backlog in fact only having a £0.5 m “backlog issue”.

With the safety and security of all hospital users paramount, the need to safeguard valuable equipment against theft, and NHS security breaches on the rise, can estates and facilities managers afford to compromise when it comes to security in healthcare facilities?

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

An in-depth focus on the new HTM 04-01, Safe Water in Healthcare Premises, and the implications for both estates professionals and a range of other healthcare personnel.

How a safe, efficient, and hygienic system for disposing of human waste in hospitals and other healthcare facilities can play a key role in maintaining an infection-free environment.

A detailed look at the latest regulations, legislation, and guidance governing electrical services and installations in healthcare was given by Richard Knight, director of professional estates and facilities business consultancy, CPA Solutions, at a recent IHEEM seminar, “Electrical installation guidance for healthcare premises”, in London. HEJ editor Jonathan Baillie reports.

In a paper that won the “Best Paper” award at the Institute of Hospital Engineering Australia’s (IHEA) 2009 conference in Queensland, Ken Liddell, MIHEA, of the Facility Coordination Unit at NSW (New South Wales) Health, draws on his own experience to consider some of the challenges,

TSB 155, the first Augmented Category 6 cabling standard, is reviewed by cabling system company Connectix, which also provides a specification guide for cable marking and administration.

Health estates managers, facilities managers and senior maintenance personnel from healthcare facilities throughout England received, at a recent IHEEM seminar, a comprehensive briefing on how to safely and legally collect and dispose of clinical, anatomical, domestic and electrical waste in line with UK and EU regulations. Jonathan Baillie reports.