The vital role of support services in ensuring the smooth operation of NHS IT networks is outlined by Eugene Conroy CEng, electrical director, Eta Projects, who goes on to provide an overview of the IT upgrade works at The Hammersmith Hospital NHS Trust.

IHEEM’s Healthcare Estates Conference, held at Harrogate in November 2005, clearly underlined how architects, designers, constructors, engineers, and estate and facility managers need to work cohesively to ensure healthcare premises are fully safe and fit for function – both now and in the long term. Nicholas Marshall and Jason Rayfield report.

Efficient use of energy, care for the environment and working in a sustainable way are becoming increasingly important, and IHEEM is staging a series of seminars looking at these areas. Particular focus will be on sustainability issues.

David Powell and Alex McKinlay, both from property consultant Drivers Jonas LLP’s planning and development team, offer some strategic advice on land sales in a downturn.

Sustainability specialists within global professional services consultancy Arup have developed a statistical model based on Carbon Trust-collated data that they believe will enable owners and occupiers of even large estates to identify the most cost-effective means of improving their buildings’ sustainability both now and in the future.

At “Rebuilding the NHS”, a recent Health Service Journal conference in London, Daryl Murphy, a partner at leading architect and health planning specialist for the primary and community care sectors Murphy Philipps, explained how the Department of Health’s (DH’s) forthcoming HBN 11-01 Health Building Note sets out a “less prescriptive approach” to the design of new primary care and community healthcare facilities.

When it comes to ensuring that your cold storage operation and maintenance meets MHRA requirements, it pays to ensure that your service supplier knows what it is doing.

This summer will see the publication of the first amendment to the British Standard 7671:2008, Requirements for Electrical Installations.

David Navarrete, director of Research Initiatives a Sky Factory, a leading designer of research-verified virtual skylights, discusses the cognitive mechanisms by which the company’s Luminous SkyCeilings – reportedly the only products of their kind to earn a Jury Award from an international panel of architects – reduce acute stress and patient anxiety.

The NHS produces up to 600,000 tonnes of waste per annum – more than 1 per cent of all domestic UK waste. The management of this waste is an essential part of the healthcare system, and yet it’s an area we rarely hear about.

Brandon Medical is a multi-award-winning, UK-based medical technology company with 70 years’ healthcare experience. Its medical healthcare products include operating and surgical lights, medical AV systems, telemedicine solutions, touchscreen surgeon’s control panels, and uninterruptible power and medical IT (IPS) systems.

Aesthetics are rarely high on the agenda for washroom facilities in the healthcare sector; for estates and facilities teams, compliance and technical performance take precedence, especially as regards infection control and user safety.

Effective environmental monitoring of ambient spaces housing everything from a catering operation to wards is key for safe, appropriate conditions in hospitals and other healthcare facilities.

Burkhard Musselmann, managing principal and healthcare architect at the UK office of architectural practice, Stantec, and Brenda Bush-Moline, an ASHE member who is healthcare design lead and senior principal at the firm’s Chicago office, discuss the need to consider cultural diversity in the healthcare design process, and suggest ways in which this can be achieved.

Conscious that it can be difficult to conduct effective medical gas training on ‘live’ hospital sites, an Authorising Engineer (MGPS), and the founder of medical gas pipeline services specialist, Medical Engineering Systems (MES), has opened his first dedicated training centre in Durham, fully equipped with a range of ‘live’ medical gas equipment.

Lawrence Crompton and Chris More of Siemens, and Regional Partner at DSSR, Derek Jolley, describe a project to replace the electrical emergency power system at a large acute hospital.

How antimicrobial copper surfaces can assist with hospital infection control and support the fight against nosocomial infection.

With the government’s ambition to halve the number of Gram-negative bloodstream infections in the NHS by 2020, a washroom specialist explores what these plans look like ‘for those at the coalface’, and why ‘there has never been a better time to invest in infection control’.

Geir Pedersen, head of the Project Management Department at Norway’s Haukeland University Hospital, explains how staff at the Bergen hospital have worked closely with Zanzibar’s largest hospital for the past six years to improve healthcare services there, providing considerable expertise and input.

Modular boilers with large turndown ratio and wide differential temperatures between the flow and return are rising in popularity, reports a British commercial boiler manufacturer.