HEALTHCARE ESTATES 2024 KEYNOTES
The varying routes to registration highlighted
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.
October’s Healthcare Estates 2024 conference in Manchester saw some topical, thought-provoking, and insightful conference presentations from NHS leaders, academics, and industry experts, with the broad-ranging content touching on some of the biggest challenges and opportunities for the healthcare engineering and estates and facilities management community, and the associated professionals working in the design and construction of, and supply to, such buildings. The Day One opening keynote session, on one of the
key conference themes – Governance, Assurance & Compliance – was chaired by IHEEM CEO, Pete Sellars, who told delegates: “IHEEM is an engineering institute, but until today we’ve never had a keynote session actually dealing with the focus of engineering. For this opening keynote we have three fantastic speakers – Dr Hilary Leevers, Chief Executive of EngineeringUK, Professor John Chudley, Chair of the Engineering Council, and Simon Corben, head of Profession for NHS Estates & Facilities at NHS England.”
Close working with IHEEM over the past year Dr Leevers, the first to speak, explained that EngineeringUK – a not-for-profit organisation which works to ‘drive change so more young people choose engineering and technology’ – had been working closely with IHEEM over the last year, and said it was ‘an absolute pleasure’ to be able to present at the event. She said: “I’m going to focus on the engineering workforce – an absolutely necessary part of what you all do.” Dr Leevers explained that she would cover four key elements – Understanding the (‘wider engineering’) workforce needs, ‘What’s happening in skills policy – particularly with a new government’, ‘What EngineeringUK does to help with the skills agenda’, and ‘How you can get involved’. “To contextualise the challenges you may well be facing in recruiting engineers or technologists,” she told delegates, “this is something all areas of the engineering sector are currently seeing. Demand for engineers is certainly growing. Looking towards 2030-2035, there are hundreds of thousands of new roles that will need filling, most being driven by Net Zero, but also via the renewal of infrastructure, and the move to digitisation and automation.” Currently, she explained, around 6.3 million people work in the UK’s ‘engineering and technology footprint’, accounting for 19% of the workforce, but 25% of all job advertisements relate to the field. Dr Leevers said: “EngineeringUK is a member organisation, and many of our members are facing considerable recruitment challenges – so if you’re
experiencing this, you’re not alone. You’re not going to be able to compete with each other to address this, so we are seeking a massive collaborative effort to grow the talent pool that everyone can recruit from.” Moving to key policy developments, Dr Leevers said:
“We now have a new, mission-driven government, with five major missions – NHS ‘Fit for the future’ being the fifth – a huge opportunity. However, I’d also draw your attention to the first two – sustained economic growth, and achieving clean energy, which will both drive huge demand for engineering and technology skills.
Pay attention to the sector “As a sector,” she continued, “we’re absolutely telling government: ‘We in engineering underpin the success of these missions. You must ensure that we have the right workforce in place.’ “ This created a good opportunity, ‘which actually the government had recognised’. Dr Leevers’ next slide, headed ‘The emergent workforce planning system’, showed some of the key Government departments and other bodies – such as the Migration Advisory Committee and the Labour Market Advisory Board, involved in current and future workforce policy and planning strategy. She said: “Things are still evolving, but we’re in quite an interesting position, with the need for a coherent workforce strategy being properly embraced.” This had been ‘flagged’ in the current government’s manifesto. The speaker elaborated: “There’s a definite desire to reduce our continuing reliance on immigration. I love to see positive recruitment from overseas. It’s very enriching, but we’ve now become quite dependent on it in some areas, leading the Government to ask the Home Office to look at these and work with others to develop workforce plans.”
January 2025 Health Estate Journal 37
‘Embracing the Challenges’ was the theme of Healthcare Estates 2024.
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