At Healthcare Estates 2024, three speakers representing large organisations – NHS England, multinational professional services partnership, EY, and the healthcare division of Siemens AG, discussed some of today’s major workforce challenges and opportunities.

The opening Day One keynote session at last year’s Healthcare Estates conference saw three complementary presentations on the importance of engineering, the challenges of recruiting more engineers to help address current and anticipated skills shortages, and some of the work by the Engineering Council, EngineeringUK, and the NHS England NHS Estates and Facilities team – working in tandem – to strengthen and grow the engineering workforce, enhance training and career development, and ensure high professional standards.

In the first two of three infection prevention and control (‘IPC’)-themed articles published late last year in HEJ (October and November 2024) from senior architects at HLM, associate director for healthcare, Neil Orpwood, and head of Healthcare, Melanie Jacobsen Cox, focused on the need for early collaboration between designers, architects, and IPC teams, in creating safe healthcare environments, and an apparent lack of knowledge on the subject among some healthcare design teams. In the third, Neil Orpwood explains how HLM developed an improved internal design tool to help its architects implement, manage, and track, IPC design, derogation, and risk.

Simon Lovegrove, CEO of MHealth, who has considerable experience as the lead on, or as a contributor to, the development of over 150 hospitals globally, and has managed major hospitals and other healthcare facilities in the UK, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and China, explains why – based on his own experience – he believes integrated hospitals achieve greater efficiency, and create more opportunity to draw the healthcare facility into the community, while simultaneously providing better continuity of care.

Implementing a centralised Computer-Aided Facilities Management (CAFM) system to manage ongoing workflow and maintenance can make healthcare estates more efficient, while also ensuring that ‘nothing falls through the cracks with regards to compliance’. So says Nigel Robinson, General manager of international facilities management software provider, Service Works Global, who explains how to implement a digital strategy and the resulting benefits, with examples from work carried out with the Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust.

‘Sustainability isn’t a destination – it’s a journey’, argues Steve Bishop, Business Development manager at Spirax Sarco. In this article he focuses on optimising the running and maintenance of the boiler house as part of that ongoing commitment, and the benefits this can bring. His message is that even small steps can bring considerable increases in plant efficiency, while reducing both costs and carbon emissions.

The potential issues with RAAC – a lightweight precast concrete frequently used in UK public sector buildings from the mid-1950s to the mid-1990s, are well documented. The challenges of remediation in a live hospital, with a focus on Airedale General Hospital near Keighley, were discussed in a presentation at October’s Healthcare Estates conference

In this ‘Q&A’-style article, James Weber, Marketing manager at SFG20, the UK industry standard for building maintenance, talks to Mathew Houghton, IT lead for Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, to understand how – as the latter puts it – he got back an entire working day per week of time savings using SFG20 content and software.

As one of the largest real estate owners in the UK, the NHS is under pressure to optimise its assets’ health and reduce its carbon footprint. Like many NHS facilities, St George’s Hospital in south London must deliver adequate clinical services, efficiently. After securing sustainability funds, the hospital’s team enlisted multiple specialists to help it improve consumption and asset performance. Dave Lister, a Healthcare Solutions specialist at monitoring solutions integrator, IAconnects, explains how the hospital embraced environmental monitoring.

We breathe, on average, 12 times per minute, 720 times per hour, and 17,280 times a day, but how do we know that our healthcare buildings are safe and healthy when it comes to air quality? Renée Jacobs, Healthcare Business Development manager at Distech Controls, discusses the importance of good indoor air quality, and some of the steps that can be taken to maintain healthy indoor environments for all users of such facilities using ‘integrated systems and connected technology’.

Hiroshi Yasuhara, President of the Healthcare Engineering Association of Japan (HEAJ), discusses a study undertaken with the participation of 257 of the country’s hospitals into some of the key infrastructural and other adaptations they made to address a surge in patient numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Without its staff, the NHS cannot function. The ‘triple whammy’ of Brexit, COVID, and over a decade of austerity, are placing even more pressure on an over-stretched healthcare system, raising more concerns about staff wellbeing. Sophie Crocker, Architect at White Arkitekter, discusses how healthcare workplace design can contribute to staff wellbeing with four examples from the Scandinavian practice’s work in Sweden.

Patrick Morrison, Healthcare Sector director for NG Bailey’s Engineering Division, discusses the engineering and services business’s use of Modern Methods of Construction and a standard ‘kit of parts’ approach to healthcare schemes – which enables it to deliver projects ‘in a significantly safer, better, greener, and more efficient way’ than using traditional construction methods. He draws for ‘evidence’ particularly on recent such work for the Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Reval Continuing Care MD, Jason Ashman, discusses the importance of only purchasing compliant water fittings for use in healthcare settings – with a particular focus on assisted bathing equipment – and sets out some of the key things that potential purchasers of such products should look out for.

Alasdair Ben Dixon, a chartered architect and Partner at architecture and design practice, Collective Works, discusses the firm’s recent work with local organisations to design and create social prescribing hubs that give patients more agency in their own health outcomes – by making clear the activities which can most benefit their wellbeing. He explains that ‘by addressing the root causes of ill health, and enhancing overall wellbeing, social prescribing has emerged as a powerful tool in the healthcare landscape’.

This year’s Healthcare Estates IHEEM Awards, presented at a ‘sellout’ gala dinner on 8 October at Manchester’s Kimpton Clocktower Hotel, saw 650 guests witness the presentation of 13 awards, including one celebrating Lifetime Achievement. After a three-course dinner, footballing legend, Kevin Keegan, entertained guests with some amusing and interesting recollections from an incredible career. The genial former striker also chatted to attendees – many of whom remembered seeing him play – throughout an enjoyable and lively evening celebrating achievement, innovation, and commitment. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.

Carl Knight, managing director of leading heat transfer specialist, Fulton, discusses the critical importance of Technical Boiler House Risk Assessments (TBHRAs) for NHS Trusts and healthcare facilities, exploring relevant regulations, assessment requirements for both fuel-fired and electrically-heated steam boilers, and what he dubs ‘the severe implications of non-compliance’.

Geoff Halliday, Business consultant at WB Power Services, discusses the practical application of the guidance in HTM 06 to standby generators, the variance with how diesel generators are designed and built, and how some of the most common apparent ambiguities or variances can readily be overcome. He also discusses the generators’ critical role in the event of a utility power failure.

Research indicates NHS EFM staff spend an average of 11 hours each week navigating disparate information sources for answers to common challenges. Addressing this inefficiency, a team from the University of Cambridge, supported by IHEEM, has developed an AI-driven platform ‘to provide instant, evidence-based answers to technical queries’. Carl-Magnus von Behr, Director of innex.ai, unveiled the system at the recent IHEEM Wales Regional Conference at the ICC Wales. Here he, CTO and co-founder of innex.ai, Dr Jan Blümel, and final-year medical student and researcher at the University of Southampton, Alan Saji, report.

HEJ reports on the journey taken recently by provider of specialist AE services, DRLC, to gain accreditation to the ISO 9001 process improvement, and the ISO 14001 environmental, standards, working with Richard Dolman, MD at Glade Consulting, whose specialist services include quality management system implementation and internal auditing.