WATER HYGIENE & SAFETY


Ensuring water safety in the drive to Net Zero


Anil Madan, Non-Residential Marketing manager at Ideal Standard UK and Armitage Shanks, reports on an Armitage Shanks 2024 Water Safety Forum hosted at the London Design and Specification Centre in Clerkenwell, which brought together experts from across the healthcare sector to explore the question, ‘How can the drive to Net Zero in the NHS be compatible with safe water delivery?’


Decarbonising the NHS is a huge and complex challenge, not just because of the size and complexity of the organisation, but also due to the task of reducing emissions without introducing risks to patient safety. The solution will need to bring together professionals from across the healthcare sector alongside contractors and suppliers from the private sector, and will likely come in the form of both technological and procedural progress. Water is at the heart of the challenge, with the NHS required to heat a huge amount of water, and using a huge amount of energy to do so. Water, waste, and building energy contribute 15% towards the total carbon footprint of the service, meaning water has to be a central pillar of carbon reduction efforts.


Forum brought together experts To address these issues and foster multidisciplinary collaboration, Armitage Shanks brought together experts from across the healthcare sector for its 2024 Water Safety Forum hosted at its London Design and Specification Centre in Clerkenwell. The 2024 Forum was chaired by Elise Maynard, director of the Water Management Society, and an independent microbiologist. The wide-ranging discussion explored the question: ‘How can the drive to Net Zero in the NHS be compatible with safe water delivery? The following experts attended the Forum:


n Professor Elaine Cloutman-Green, Consultant Clinical Scientist, Infection Control Doctor, and Deputy DIPC, at Great Ormond Street Hospital, Honorary Professor at UCL, and Chair of the Environment Network;


n Terry Moss, New Product Development leader for Non-Residential Fittings at Ideal Standard;


n Peter Orendecki, Contract and Support manager, and Water Responsible Person, at University Hospital Southampton;


n Steven van de Peer, head of Authorised Engineer Services at Tetra Consulting, and lead author of then CIBSE KS21 re-write;


n Alyson Prince, former NHS Infection Control Nurse and specialist in the built environment, now an Independent Infection Prevention and Control Nurse consultant in the healthcare built environment;


n Steve Vaughan, Technical director of Public Health Engineering and Fire Protection at AECOM, and past Chair of CIBSE SoPHE;


n Richard Wainwright, Programme manager and Senior Authorised Person at CBRE.


The scale of the challenge In October 2020, the NHS committed to reaching carbon Net Zero by 2040 – making it the world’s first health service to do so, publishing its Delivering a ‘Net Zero’ National Health Service report, which sets out its ambitions and targets. While the ambition of the NHS cannot be understated in its aims, the scale of the service, and the challenge it faces, are vast. For water, the lack of direct and standardised monitoring is a key barrier to truly understanding where water and heat are being wasted – and therefore opportunities for reduction. More data monitoring the consistent usage of both hot and cold water is a necessity to understand the real


Armitage Shanks brought together experts from across the healthcare sector for its 2024 Water Safety Forum, which was hosted at its London Design and Specification Centre in Clerkenwell.


January 2025 Health Estate Journal 53


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