TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT Insight
STEM DELIVERY AND SUCCESSES 2020-2024
The drawing to a close of IHEEM’s current Five Year Business Plan period offers a useful opportunity to reflect on achievements against the objectives set out back in 2020.
O
ne of the Institute’s five Key Themes, ‘Developing Future Leaders’, has been supported by
core objectives and deliverables; notably:
• Core Objective 1 – Consistently grow and develop membership.
• Core Objective 3 – Encourage the next generation of engineering and
healthcare estates and facilities management (EFM) leaders.
• Core Objective 6 – Raise the profile of IHEEM nationally and internationally,
and become more professional in its approach and accountability to members and the Engineering Council UK.
• Core Objective 7 – Create an environment for members to engage
and network with other healthcare associations and Institutes.
These objectives have been seen out through a varied range of STEM activity, offering students and budding engineers the opportunity to learn about healthcare engineering through age-appropriate challenges, workshops, and competitions. Among the most notable highlights of STEM outreach from the past five years for the Institute, IHEEM was a theme partner of the IET’s Faraday Challenge competition in 2021-22, with the Institute setting the challenge to design a prototype to be used in children’s hospitals to make patients’ stays more comfortable. The event reached over 5,000 students aged 7-15 across 285 schools.
More recently, in 2024, the Institute
delivered the first of its LEGO activity Workshops at Bedales School in Hampshire. IHEEM President, Alison Ryan, delivered a presentation on her career trajectory
14 Health Estate Journal November 2024
and passion for healthcare engineering, with students then being tasked to design and build a hospital from LEGO blocks, to accommodate certain criteria. A further competition run by IHEEM this summer invited young people to design posters around how engineering helps: animals, people, and the planet. As a new venture for the Institute, the competition saw online engagement of close to 250 individuals. (For more details, see the Updates).
The importance of promoting diversity in STEM
The current uptake of STEM subjects in early and middle education and, more so, diversity within that uptake,
represents both a social equity concern, and the significant unrealised potential of a much-needed future workforce. In centering the need for greater equality, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) within STEM engagement, IHEEM is looking to ensure that opportunities for young people in healthcare engineering are accessible and achievable to young people irrespective of socioeconomic background. This objective also serves to widen the net for healthcare leaders, and deliver a dynamic, robust workforce long into the future.
The Next Five Years
In 2025, IHEEM will publish its next Five Year Business Plan, and thus embark on a new period of strategic and focused objective setting and delivery. The successes of IHEEM’s past five years’
worth of STEM outreach have laid the foundations for even more wide-reaching and inclusive delivery in the next five. In continuing to hone the format and delivery of STEM activities to encourage creativity and an open-minded, flexible approach
A LEGO Workshop at Bedales School.
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