NEWS


RIBA drops 50-year-old


work stages The Royal Institution of British Architects (RIBA) has torn up half a century of tradition by deciding to abolish its Plan of Work stages A to L. It intends to replace its traditional 11 stages with seven numbered alternatives from spring 2013 in a bid to simplify project planning and promote industry-wide integration. The decision has already been ratified by RIBACouncil, but the institution revealed it was preparing to conduct a consultation with its membership. However, the move is part of a review aimed at delivering the ‘unified industry structure’ supported by the Construction Industry Council (CIC), which has called for greater simplification of industry working processes. Reducing the traditional 11 stages to just seven includes the merging of stages A and B into a single ‘preparation stage’. RIBA also said it would be updating contract forms and revising its standard form of agreement in the coming months.


Revised guide focuses on


maintenance costs


The SFG20 standard maintenance specification for building and engineering services has been revised to help clients, consultants and contractors reduce costs. The Building & Engineering


Services Association (B&ES) has produced new customisation and prioritisation components for the maintenance schedules contained in this new web-enabled version of its 22-year-old guide. It claims the new version will simplify the tendering process, reduce building maintenance costs and ensure compliance. SFG20 is recognised as ‘the backbone to the building engineering services maintenance industry’, according to Bruce Kirton, chief executive of B&ES Publications.


8 CIBSE Journal December 2012


Abandon silos, engineers urged


l Engineers need to take a more disciplinary approach


Students of engineering must break out of their technical ‘silos’ and engage with other disciplines to deliver the UK’s future infrastructure needs, according to leading industry figures. Professor Barry Clarke, president of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), and former CIBSE president Graham Manly, OBE warned that the UK would fail to deliver vital


projects without a more multi- disciplinary approach. Speaking during the celebrations of the 120th anniversary of London South Bank University (LSBU) they said educators would have to define a new ‘culture’ for infrastructure and building engineering. They also identified Building Information Modelling (BIM) as crucial to this proposed new spirit of collaboration. ‘BIM is not just software,’ said


Manly. ‘It represents a cultural shift that could transform the way


construction projects are delivered.’ The government’s National Infrastructure Plan proposes to spend £200bn of extra money on energy and transport projects, but Clarke said it could prove difficult to spend that money without increasing the number of engineers. The Royal Academy of


Engineering has calculated that the country will need 190,000 more engineering professionals by 2020 to meet the country’s infrastructure demands, but it estimates that just 60% of engineering graduates were able to find employment in their chosen discipline. LSBU has opened a new department to help engineering students develop commercial skills. Manly congratulated LSBU on its efforts to provide cross-disciplinary education. ‘It is vital that students are taught outside of their little silos and I am delighted that LSBU has embraced this in the courses offered by its Urban Engineering department,’ he said.


Ventilation linked to MRSA infections


Healthcare facilities are failing to contain airborne infections transmitted via poorly maintained ventilation and air conditioning systems, according to a leading indoor air quality specialist. Dr Ghasson Shabha, senior lecturer at Birmingham


School of the Built Environment, told a webinar hosted by the CIBSEASHRAE Group that the threat posed by dirty ductwork is often overlooked by healthcare professionals, who fail to put planned maintenance strategies in place because the source of the infections is ‘out of sight, out of mind’. He also criticised the fact that only around 5% of air conditioning systems have been inspected, despite this now being a mandatory requirement under European regulations. Bacterial spores in ductwork can often be behind outbreaks of MRSA and other serious infections in hospitals and clinics, he told his global audience, which included members of the Building & Engineering Services Association (B&ES) and the Institute of Healthcare Engineering and Estate Management (IHEEM). ‘The healthcare environment is a reservoir for potentially infective agents, which can spread unpredictably in ventilation and air conditioning


systems, making the risk difficult to control and manage,’ said Shabha. ‘People seeking timely information about the patterns of cross-infection are in urgent need of better data.’ He said the ventilation hygiene industry was eager to address this potentially fatal problem, but facilities managers (FMs) did not have a system of information exchange that would highlight the risks, or the extent of the problem across the whole healthcare sector. He advocated a system – being piloted by Leicester and Rutland NHSTrusts – which uses wireless sensors embedded into mechanical ventilation, air conditioning and plumbing systems to assess the risk of airborne infection. This provides real-time data to a remote web server accessible by all healthcare FMs. He added that 3D building information modelling software could also help ventilation specialists identify ‘infection hotspots’, and continued: ‘The data can then be fed into a predictive infection criticality model (PICM) to assess the intensity, and frequency of colonisation and hotspots. This allows FMs to manage the risks more proactively.’


www.cibseashrae.org www.cibsejournal.com


AUREMAR/SHUTTERSTOCK


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