Chris Northey, a member of IHEEM’s London branch who, having begun his career as a plumbing apprentice in July 1987 with his father’s firm, is today Public Health Design Group head at London-based consulting engineers BDSP Partnership, last month visited Buckingham Palace to collect the City & Guilds Prince Philip Medal 2011 from the Duke of Edinburgh.

Electric arc flash, or 'electrical flashover', is one of the most deadly, least understood hazards of electricity in the workplace, and prevalent in most industries.

An independent survey into hospital food standards in England conducted earlier this year for the Soil Association saw over half of those patients surveyed admit they would not be happy serving the meals they received during a recent hospital stay to a child, while 29% said the food was so bad that, at times, they could not recognise what was on their plate.

Trend’s message to visitors at this year’s show was that 84% of a healthcare estate’s energy consumption can be controlled by a building energy management system (BEMS); thus “just by making this asset work harder, significant energy and carbon savings can be made”.

With the NHS in England spending some £6 billion annually on hospital supplies, but (says the Department of Health) some English hospitals paying nearly three times as much for the same items as their counterparts, Health Minister, Simon Burns, has called on suppliers to significantly extend use of standardised GS1 barcodes in an attempt to improve “transparency” for procurement staff.

In January this year three babies died from Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections in Northern Ireland, and the source was traced back to the hospital water supply.

Thirty-one years after its establishment in a small office in Wigan, independent life safety equipment manufacturer, C-TEC, has moved into a new 75,000 ft2 factory, ‘the size of three football pitches’, marking the start of what founder and MD, Andrew Foster, dubs ‘the next phase in our exciting development’.

Micad says its software systems generated considerable interest at this year’s HefmA exhibition, with particular attention being given to its new Help Desk and Room Booking and Utilisation Software.

Facilities management, and estates and property management software specialist, Micad, says it has spent the past three years engineering and perfecting a bespoke solution for estates and facilities professionals seeking accurate information on the use of space within buildings on their estate.

Turnkey construction company, MTX Contracts, has recently completed a suite of five ‘modern and future-proofed’ operating theatres at the Ysbyty Glan Clwyd in Bodelwyddan, Denbighshire, in the first phase of a 90-phase, £89.9 million redevelopment of facilities at the North Wales hospital being undertaken by Laing O’Rourke for the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board.

Three years after launching the NHS Carbon Reduction Strategy 2009, Saving Carbon, Improving Health, the NHS Sustainable Development Unit (NHS SDU) has initiated a ‘major consultation and engagement exercise’ to inform the development of a new ‘Sustainable Development Strategy for The Health, Public Health and Social Care System’ for 2014-2020.

An IHEEM-supported conference staged recently at Salford University by the University’s Dementia Design Group (HEJ – November 2012), examined the impact that different hospital environments have on people with dementia.

The Health and Social Care Act’s potential implications for the healthcare estates community, how the NHS and private sectors can better collaborate to get the most of out of their built and other assets, how estates professionals can shape and inform future guidance, and the role of the new NHS Property Services Company (NHS PropCo), were among the hot topics addressed at this year’s IHEEM Healthcare Estates conference in Manchester.

Douglas Delabie says its new Securitherm thermostatic single lever mixers ‘provide safety and comfort for patients and retirement home residents’, with the ‘ergonomic’ mixers featuring a single control to open the water flow and adjust the temperature.

Spirax Sarco has launched the RIM10 rotor insertion flowmeter for steam, gas, and liquids.

The keynote speeches at this year’s Healthcare Estates conference, which was themed ‘Putting positive energy into healthcare’.

In our other article based around operating theatres in this issue of HEJ (see pages 64-72), we examine how some of the latest technology is benefiting users, but in this article – with all areas of the NHS charged with reducing energy consumption and cutting carbon emissions.

Speaking in a presentation at October’s Healthcare Estates 2013, senior representatives from a number of Principal Supply Chain Partners (PSCPs) within the ProCure21+ National Framework explained their ongoing work to develop designs for standardised and repeatable rooms.

With wireless technology now an integral part of all our lives, and miniaturisation of computing power having made even hand-held portable devices such as mobile phones powerful tools in their own right.

A new mortuary and bereavement facility at one of North Wales’s largest acute hospitals, the Ysbyty Glan Clwyd near Rhyl, formed from 16 steel-framed modules that were manufactured off site, and subsequently craned into position to greatly speed project completion, was delivered ‘well below original cost budget, four weeks ahead of schedule’, by turnkey construction specialist, MTX Contracts.