IHEEM ROUNDTABLE – PART ONE


at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust. My particular interest today is in discussing research opportunities, and how IHEEM can collaborate with universities to raise our profile and add value back into education. I’m particularly concerned about the current limitations succession planning-wise for our future generations. Cath and I


how we can future-proof our estates teams and retain good staff.”


Dr Ghasson Shabha.


worked on a couple of research projects previously, and one thing I’m particularly keen to discuss is how IHEEM can open up opportunities for research and dissertation projects within NHS Trusts and hospitals.”


Involvement with IET and RAE Next to speak was Kim Shelley (KS), a director at ETA Projects, a mechanical/ electrical design consultancy that predominantly serves the NHS. She said: “I am a member of the IHEEM Diversity and Inclusion Group, and am also involved with the Institution of Engineering and Technology, with which we’re engaging on talks at universities. I’m keen to see how the IET, IHEEM, and the Royal Academy of Engineering, can work together, because, like Ian, I’m concerned about succession planning.”


Dr Richard Beattie (RB), Principal engineer at AECOM, was next. He explained: “I’m a mechanical and public health design engineer and client technical advisor at AECOM in Edinburgh. I also provide support as an environmental studio tutor at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, have a strong interest in water-based building systems, and have published several articles on domestic hot and cold water services. I am a Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE), and of the Society of Public Health Engineers (SOPHE).”


Claire Hennessy (CH) was the final participant to introduce herself. She said: “I’m director of Estates at Birmingham Community Healthcare Foundation Trust, having been in the NHS for 24 years – from apprentice, to my current position as director. Over that time I’ve had considerable help from the service towards my academic qualifications, and have striven to input the learnings into the teams I’ve built. Over time, however, this has become harder, especially in terms of funding academic courses with tight budgets. We’re also finding that, having trained our staff, we then lose them to local service-providers such as universities, councils, and other employers, so I’m keen to see


Roundtable’s key theme With the introductions over, I explained that the aim was to discuss how the academic sector and personnel undertaking research in, for example, building services engineering, facilities management, and wider engineering, construction, and building design-related subjects, might work more closely with institutes like IHEEM, and vice versa. The first question I put was thus: ‘Do academics studying relevant subjects such as building services engineering currently get sufficient opportunity to ‘engage’ with healthcare estates and healthcare engineering personnel, so that they can discover more about some of the challenges the latter face?’


Ian Hinitt said: “I have a long- standing interest in both infection control in the built environment, and


sustainability, and have been blessed with opportunities to work with people like Cath Noakes, Professor Clive Beggs at Bradford, and Professor Alan Short at Cambridge University, on some high profile EPSRC grant-funded projects. The resulting networking I’ve gained has been exceptional. I’d like to


Evangelia Chrysikou.


look at developing this as an opportunity for IHEEM’s membership, because the level of networking with the higher education sector can provide a whole host of insights and CPD opportunities. I think there’s substantial scope for us working with academia going forward. Yet within IHEEM we are currently pretty limited as to who we’re connecting with.”


Prof. Cath Noakes. 34 Health Estate Journal February 2019


Historical reasons for poor engagement JB: “Why should this be?” IH: “I think it is historical. A while ago we developed an Affiliate Membership scheme for universities, free to join, via which students get access to IHEEM’s expertise and resources, such as its Technical Platforms, CPD events, and HEJ. To date there’s been a slow take-up though, and I think more marketing from IHEEM is required. The scheme is aimed at lecturers, professionals, and undergraduates.” JB: “That interesting. Cath, You’ve done a lot of interesting research into all sorts of building services topics. How much


engagement have you found between university personnel and the healthcare engineering/healthcare estates sector?” CN: “It’s been pretty mixed. We’ve worked particularly well with Ian and others, but at other times it’s not been so easy. When people are busy, there are the challenges of fitting things in, and identifying the best contact and how to reach them. Facilitating how people contact each other is useful. Maybe there is some opportunity – through an IHEEM conference or event – to not simply focus on interesting research results, but to talk instead to people about the processes and mechanisms for setting up joint research projects. Ian mentioned EPSRC projects, which we have been involved in, but every year we have a set of undergraduate students who do dissertation projects; quite a number relate to hospitals. Much of the time we fall back on the same contacts or they use generic data, and to be able to put those students in touch with a wider range of people would be great. We probably need to share project ideas earlier on. There are other routes, such as Knowledge Transfer Partnerships – potentially a really good route for quite practical innovation-focused projects within either an NHS organisation or a healthcare professional body wanting to work with academia. So there may be something we could do around sharing the ways in which people can interact.”


‘Everybody being busy’ JB: “Do you think your counterparts in other academic institutions have the same sort of issues, and do the same things apply in terms of dealing with the healthcare sector and healthcare engineers?” CN: “Probably. I think it’s often just to do with everybody being so busy today. We could explore ways in which we can identify the challenges more readily, and share opportunities for how best to address them. One which inevitably comes with working in a hospital environment is that – depending on your project – some research requires ethical agreement, and ethics can be a barrier, particularly to short-term studies like undergraduate projects, because the timescales for securing NHS ethics approval are very challenging.” JB: “In what sort of areas might that be a barrier?” CN: “We have some projects running at the moment with St James’s Hospital in Leeds where we are taking environmental samples, together with patient observations, and going into wards for surveys. For these we need full ethical agreement.”


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