COMMENT COVER STORY Advertising feature
Paving the way for digitising healthcare fire system testing and maintenance
Fire systems require testing, inspection, and maintenance to ensure that they continue to work well for the building. As part of the testing process, smoke detectors must be functionally tested and inspected annually. This is proven to be one of the most disruptive processes in any hospital estate, as fire detection devises are typically placed in every room of the building, which then requires a technician to access it and place test smoke inside the detector to confirm that it functions correctly.
Furthermore, proving that all your estate’s detectors have been tested can often be as challenging as the recording of test events, and management of the process – when done manually – can be inaccurate. Hard-to-reach detectors or those in ceiling voids can easily be missed and left untested, which could jeopardise the building’s overall fire safety. New Honeywell Self-Test technology solves these issues and
March 2024 Volume 78 Number 3
www.iheem.org.uk
IHEEM
JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTE OF HEALTHCARE ENGINEERING AND ESTATE MANAGEMENT
Lessons from failures not being heeded
Te Grenfell Tower Fire, the ensuing investigations, and Dame Judith Hackitt’s two highly critical resulting reports have thrown all aspects of building safety into the spotlight. With the secondary legislation needed to support the practical implementation of the new Building Safety Act having come into force last October, and the new Building Safety Regulator set to monitor progress on building safety, any failings in new or existing buildings which could impact occupant safety are likely to be jumped upon. Te Building Engineering Services Association
Learning lessons from past projects
Cromwell Hospital’s sustainability drive
Digital healthcare a catalyst
for human-centred design
www.healthestatejournal.com
FC HEJ
Mar24.indd 1 19/02/2024 14:33
digitises the process –creating audit trails that allow you to prove that your sub-contractor has completed a full functional test of the fire system. This helps service providers and estate owners save time on site and provide real-time updates on the performance, testing, and overall compliance to local fire safety codes.
Self-Test technology automates the process without causing the disruption that manual testing brings with it, including requiring access to sensitive areas of hospital estates, such as operating theatres and low immunity wards.
The multi-award-winning Self-Test and cloud-based app has already started to transform fire maintenance within healthcare estates, and has seen the functional testing of all smoke detectors in a hospital be completed within just 35 minutes. As healthcare estates can be large and complex buildings, Self-Test technology offers an effective and future-proof solution to improve fire safety compliance and overall life safety.
Honeywell Fire
Building 5, Carlton Park Narborough Leicester LE19 0LF
T: +44 (0)203 4091779 E:
gentenquiry@honeywell.com
www.gent.co.uk
last month warned, however (see page 17), that – even against this backdrop – many contractors are still ignoring safety regulations ‘despite repeated warnings that measures introduced by the Building Safety Act are already in place and affect every project’. While the Act itself is primarily focused on ‘high-rise-buildings’, BESA says it has already changed many elements of the existing fire safety and building regulations – including the supporting approved documents applicable to all projects. Te Chair of the Association’s Building Safety Act Advisory Group, Nick Mead, warns that ‘anyone sitting back and waiting to see what happens is going to be in a lot of trouble’, adding: “Te Regulator is looking for proof that you are complying with regulations now, and that the people working on a project were competent to carry out the specific tasks assigned to them.” On a strongly related theme, on pages 29-32
Consultant medical microbiologist, Dr Michael Weinbren, and three expert co-authors argue that ensuring patient safety in new healthcare facilities requires ‘a markedly different approach to design and construction’ – one of ‘no longer blindly following guidance’, ‘designing with patient safety uppermost’, ‘heeding lessons from past projects’ – and especially unsuccessful ones, and ‘front-loading’ projects at concept stage with risk identification and consideration’. Tey are also concerned that oſten lessons from instances where building deficiencies have impacted safety – in some cases causing fatalities – are still not being heeded in the way that, for example, the airline industry investigates, and then addresses, any failings following ‘near misses’. Equally, they argue that the way healthcare guidance such as HTMs and HBNs is used ‘needs to be rapidly addressed’. It should, they say, be viewed as ‘an adjunct, ‘not something to be followed blindly, and does not replace the need for a risk-based approach, combined with assembling the requisite expertise to deliver patient safety’.
Jonathan Baillie,
Editor jonathanbaillie@
stepcomms.com
March 2024 Health Estate Journal 5
health estate journal
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