By upgrading condensate recovery systems, healthcare estates managers ‘can make major energy savings and reduce their carbon emissions’, according to steam system specialist, Spirax Sarco.

Excellent standards of cleanliness are more important for healthcare facilities than in virtually every other type of building, and well-managed drainage systems play a crucial part in this. business and commercial, utilities, public sector, and facilities management clients.

With healthcare estate budgets’ being squeezed ever tighter’, there is ‘no margin for error’ when it comes to making purchasing decisions, according to specialist in fire detection and alarm systems, Hochiki Europe.

A ‘bury your head in the sand’ approach to resilience planning is simply not an option for today’s healthcare estates managers, according to Billy Durie, contingency planning sector manager at Aggreko, a global specialist in temporary power and temperature control solutions.

Duty-bound under contracts with partner NHS PCTs, independent primary care contractors, and other community stakeholders who lease healthcare premises from it, to ensure that the buildings’ energy systems and plant run efficiently and cost-effectively, Community Solutions, a leading investor in, and developer of, UK community-based health, social, and local authority services.

Simon England, director at Accenture Health UK, outlines the benefits of an “assessment-based” approach to creating “smarter” healthcare buildings with reduced running costs and a lower carbon footprint.

Dr Melvyn Langford CEng, MIMechE, MCIBSE, who was employed by the NHS for nearly 40 years, and, has written several previous articles for Health Estate Journal (June 2013, September 2011, September 2010, and November 2009) on what he claims are ‘systematic failures’ in the way the maintenance of NHS buildings has been managed.

In last month’s HEJ first we ran the first of a two-part focus, by Carl Gardner, former editor of the Institution of Lighting Professionals’ Lighting Journal, on the issues surrounding lighting and the ageing population, which focused particularly on effective task lighting. In the second part of the article, the author considers the important psychological, physiological, and biological effects of lighting on older people – and how improved lighting design can benefit this group in a number of ways.

At an event held on 20 March at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, representatives from some of the UK’s largest healthcare estates – among a larger cross section of delegates – were asked the question: ‘Legionella compliance – are you doing it wrong?’

HEJ reports on three different, but equally successful, approaches to engineering apprenticeships, as the importance of passing on skills and expertise to a new generation assumes increasing significance.

A report on a recent study by the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham into dismantlable and demountable thermostatic mixing taps – part of a quest to find the optimal ‘safe’ tap design.

Nightingale Associates has been shortlisted for a regional RIBA design award for its £4 m Renal & Cardiac Unit at West Wales General Hospital in Carmarthen.

Chris Holme, principal engineer, Gateway Review and Estates and Facilities Division, Department of Health (DH), discusses what a new requirement for those running large publicly-owned buildings to display, publicly, information on their site’s energy consumption will mean for the NHS when it comes into force on 1 October.

The Health Estates & Facilities Management Association’s (HefmA) annual conference and exhibition returns to London next year, promising an international estates and facilities perspective on the future of healthcare delivery.

One of the south’s leading building services engineering consultancies has a fresh face at the top.

HLM Architects’ design, in association with Hall Black Douglas, for the new South Wing at Altnagelvin Area Hospital in Londonderry, was highly commended for the International Healthcare Project Award under 40,000 m2 at the recent Design & Health International Academy Awards in Singapore.

Pall Medical provides a diverse range of filtration membranes to the healthcare market for critical contamination control. Specifically engineered for filtration of hospital water, respiration, parenteral therapy, general surgical applications and blood component therapy,

Greater consistency in NHS signage, coupled with the assurance of a high quality, competitively-priced range of signage and wayfinding products and services, are among the benefits promised to estates and facilities teams UK-wide following the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency’s (NHS PASA) recent launch of a new pan-Government signage framework agreement. Jonathan Baillie reports, and talks to several signage suppliers appointed to the framework about their expertise, skills and recent experience.

CEO John Long has written to all voting members of the Institute to inform them that elections to the Council will be held in accordance with the Articles of Association.

Andover-based household and bathroom product supplier Croydex has launched a toilet seat which it claims effectively prevents bacteria being spread into the surrounding air and onto numerous surfaces when toilets are flushed.