In an article that first appeared in Canadian Healthcare Facilities, Peter Semchuk, a senior associate with IBI Group, explains how an innovative approach was taken to optimising indoor air quality and infection control during the construction of the recently completed Fort Saskatchewan and Strathcona Community Hospital in Canada.

This October will see the completion of a £42 million, two-phase construction project by main contractor, Medicinq Osborne, to deliver a new 86-bed adult acute inpatient mental health unit for Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) at Kingsley Green near Radlett.

Last October’s Healthcare Estates 2013 conference saw one of the first day’s ‘Engineering’ sessions debate the topic, ‘Why do so many buildings disappoint their owners and occupants?’

Three articles that featured in HEJ’s April and November 2013, and April 2014 issues, focused, respectively, on the roles and responsibilities of those operating and managing medical gas pipeline systems, the MGPS Permit to Work System, and how to raise and complete the MGPS Permit to Work.

SAACKE, which provides clean firing solutions for process and special purpose applications firing waste oil and gases, bio-oils, low CV gases, dust fuels, and standard fuels, has joined IHEEM as a Company Affiliate.

Pegler Yorkshire’s new ‘online selector tool’, INSIGHT, provides installers and contractors with ‘a way to identify the most effective method to join pipework in any given situation’ via three ‘simple stages of search and selection’ – confirming the project type, application, and pipework system.

Danish manufacturer, V Guldmann, says ceiling-mounted patient hoists can ‘improve working environments for nurses and care staff, and, if considered correctly, provide longterm cost savings and free up resources to provide such personnel with more time to care’.

Fabricator of windows, doors, curtain walling, and fencing systems, Britplas, says NHS Trusts and private healthcare companies across the UK, and other healthcare providers worldwide, entrust the company with the provision and installation of healthcare windows.

George McDonagh, validation test engineer and University teacher for Decontamination Sciences at the University of Glasgow Dental Hospital and School, and Professor Andrew J Smith, Professor of Clinical Bacteriology, honorary consultant microbiologist, and lead microbiology consultant for Decontamination, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, at the same establishment, describe the instrument decontamination teaching being provided to dental students on the Bachelor of Dental Surgery module at the Dental Hospital and School.

Pineapple Contracts’ new Ryno dining and lounge furniture products ‘combine exciting modern design, high levels of safety, and cutting-edge British manufacturing’.

Safety continues to be the Care Quality Commission’s biggest concern across all the services it inspects, the Commission’s latest annual analysis of the quality of health and adult social care in England, The state of healthcare and adult social care in England 2014/15, reveals.

A new 18-month distance learning Diploma in Medical Equipment Technologies has won praise from participants, who report significant benefits in their day-to-day roles.

Against the backdrop of a Government mandate on BIM implementation that takes effect this month, HEJ’s technical editor, Mike Arrowsmith, reports on a number of sessions at Healthcare Estates 2015 looking at the topics of Government Soft Landings and Building Information Modelling.

BOC Healthcare says its Cryogenic Safety Course ‘gives everyone working with liquid nitrogen the skills and knowledge needed to handle a potentially dangerous element safely and with confidence’.

With the opening of a new £1.4 m training facility at its Charlton House head office site in Cheltenham, steam system specialist, Spirax Sarco, believes it is now in a better position than at any time in its history to offer specialist steam system training that will enable those operating and maintaining such equipment in environments such as hospital plant rooms to optimise its performance and efficiency, cut their energy bills and carbon footprint, and ensure the safety of their staff.

Pall Medical is to hold a series of free-to-attend educational seminars, dubbed ‘training masterclasses’, across the UK focusing on current guidelines for prevention of waterborne diseases in healthcare premises, and their implications for healthcare estates teams, clinical personnel involved with augmented care such as treating burns victims and ICU patients, microbiologists, and infection control staff.

According to Stuart Davies, of Hochiki Europe, treating a fire detection system as a ‘fit and forget’ part of a building’s infrastructure can have disastrous consequences. He explains the key part that regular maintenance of such systems plays in ensuring correct operation, and avoiding unwanted alarms.

Sarah Waller CBE, RGN, FRSA, programme director at The King’s Fund’s Enhancing the Healing Environment (EHE) programme, examines the work undertaken to date, and still ongoing, to improve the care environment for people living with dementia.

Established in 2004 by three ambitious individuals at the time involved in supplying windows and building plastics to the trade, Britplas Commercial has doubled its turnover year-on-year over the past three years, largely thanks to the success of its patented anti-ligature window, the Safevent, which it initially designed specifically for the Mersey Care NHS Trust’s new multi-million pound low secure mental health unit at Liverpool’s Rathbone Hospital.

A year-long Department of Healthcommissioned, Design Council-run project, during which designers extensively observed patients and staff in A&E departments to identify what typically caused ‘flare-ups’ leading to aggression or violence, has concluded that the key to avoidance is ‘to give patients a better understanding of the system they are in’.