TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT Spotlight SPOTLIGHT ON
CHRIS JAMES Senior Estate Maintenance and Infrastructure Manager at Hampshire & Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
C
hris James IEng MIHEEM is Senior Estate Maintenance and Infrastructure Manager at Hampshire & Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, operates as IHEEM’s Southern
Branch Chair, and is a contributor on The Institute’s Mechanical Technical Platform. He has been a member of IHEEM since 2003 serving on Council for an extended period as well as multiple terms as branch chair. Having had a long-standing interest in all aspects of engineering from a young age and heavily encouraged during his secondary education, Chris signed his Deeds of Apprenticeship with the NHS at 15 and embarked on his formal mechanical engineering apprenticeship in the summer of 1980. James states: “45 years later, I remain as passionate and interested as ever regarding healthcare engineering and the role the estate can play in positively influencing patient pathways and outcomes.” Spending his formative years at Southampton General Hospital (a regional DGH and centre of clinical excellence), he accrued an
array of multi-disciplinary technical and broader estate management attributes which enabled a measured and incremental career progression, though always remaining strongly allied to the function of Hard FM. Throughout his career and as an NHS apprentice himself, Chris has always been a vocal champion for technical apprenticeships within healthcare, supporting the development and graduation of a large number of diverse young and mature individuals under his stewardship. Chris spent 35 years in the acute healthcare sector in various roles where he recounts the Health Authority during the era of Crown Immunity, before the introduction of HTMs and HBNs through to a more assured but highly complex, and more critical, health estate today.
Chris says that across 45 years employment he has had numerous highlights but notes like-for-like replacement of four large evaporative cooling towers and water chillers at a time when the industry was consciously turning away from such risk systems as particularly rewarding
He has operated with formal appointment
at Competent, Authorised and Responsible Person levels for a range of technical disciplines during his career. He says that across 45 years employment he has had numerous highlights but notes like-for-like replacement of four large evaporative cooling towers and water chillers at a time when the industry was consciously turning away from such risk systems as particularly rewarding.
In 2015 Chris became an independent multi-discipline Authorising Engineer to the UK health sector delivering support to
Trust Authorised and Designated Persons via compliance and assurance audits, providing professional commentary against design proposals and undertaking formal incident investigations. He says this role was especially rewarding technically with an opportunity to mentor up and coming talent in a variety of organisations. In 2017 Chris re-joined the NHS with his wealth of estate management experience to transform the Hard FM and major infrastructure services at Solent NHS Trust. This culminated in the turn-around of a wholly out-sourced maintenance service to a fully mobilised directly employed provision delivering best value for the Trust. Reflecting on his career to-date in and supporting the NHS, Chris is quick to underline the opportunities afforded him within
the sector citing the investment and commitment shown by those who have managed and mentored him. “The camaraderie and professional values linked to the patient-centric principles are the bedrock of why, as engineers and leaders in our field, we do this!”
18 Health Estate Journal November 2025
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