IHEEM 2019 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS
international conference, received the 2019 IHEEM Lifetime Achievement Award, while Thomas Bennett, of South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust, picked up the IHEEM Apprentice of the Year 2019 Award, in just the second year of this award category running (see full report, HEJ – November 2019). ‘Drainage infrastructure problems’ at the original venue, Manchester’s Principal Hotel, had, in fact, forced the re-location of the Dinner to Manchester Central with just five days’ notice, and Ian Hinitt said the ‘monumental efforts’ of IHEEM’s Conference Committee, the Step Exhibitions team, and staff at Manchester Central, to ensure the evening’s success at its new venue, reminded him of ‘how our own industry responds to crisis in returning to business as usual through well-drilled contingency planning, in a way that appears seamless to the casual observer’. He added: “At a dinner party recently, someone asked me about my job, in and I proudly said I was a hospital engineer.” The eminent physician responded: ‘What on earth is there to engineer in a hospital?’ While this comment had, Ian Hinitt said, been made in ‘jest’, he felt ‘the reliability of our hospital infrastructure’ was ‘often taken for granted’, adding: “And so it should be, as our clinical colleagues need to have absolute faith in the systems and surroundings where they perform their often-high risk interventions.”
Safe, resilient, and fit for purpose Today’s hospitals and other healthcare facilities were, of course, designed ‘to be safe, resilient, and fit for purpose’, but required ‘specialised and skilled design and maintenance skills from trades, management, and design staff’, to keep them operating optimally. However, Ian Hinitt said that, looking at the age profile of UK healthcare engineering and estate management professionals, there were still more engineers and allied built environment trade and professional staff retiring than entering the industry. This meant it was ‘imperative’ that IHEEM ‘bridged the skills gap by supporting the development of our young people with trades technician and graduate apprenticeship programmes’; Ian Hinitt promised more on this later. At this juncture, the IHEEM President said he wished to ‘reflect briefly’ on IHEEM’s balance sheet, which showed the Institute as ‘financially stable, with a healthy cash at bank balance of £450,000’. He said: “It is incumbent upon the Institute’s Trustees and Directors to carefully manage IHEEM’s finances, on behalf of members, and for the benefit of the membership and public, and I think you’ll agree that the balance sheet demonstrates that IHEEM’s finances are indeed well managed.” IHEEM’s surplus
20 Health Estate Journal January 2020
Speaking on the first day of October’s annual IHEEM conference, NHS England CEO, Simon Stevens, praised the hard work and commitment of healthcare estates management and healthcare engineering personnel in keeping NHS buildings and equipment running smoothly.
was currently, he explained, sufficient to carry the organisation for well in excess of the six-month benchmark period suggested as prudent by its auditors; in fact, ‘for some 12 months’.
Investing its ‘growing reserves’ At IHEEM’s 2018 AGM (see page 10), one attendee had asked how the Institute would be investing its growing financial reserves in developing the member offer. Ian Hinitt had already alluded to IHEEM’s current and planned investments in training and education, but stressed that to take these initiatives forward required ‘rock-solid foundations for our business infrastructure’.
With this in mind, and with Council’s backing, IHEEM had during 2019 invested an initial £40,000 in upgrading ‘the ageing head office IT infrastructure’. He elaborated: “The new IT system
significantly streamlines our business administration, and will support our member offer in providing accessibility to CPD seminars, webinars, and podcasts, and a host of media specific to our industry. Phase two of our IT investment will see the development of a CPD software ‘app’, to support our membership with the Engineering Council’s new mandatory requirement for all registered engineers, irrespective of discipline and Institution, to record their CPD.”
Key appointments made Moving to ‘people’, and during the past year, IHEEM had restructured its Head Office team, which was being ‘developed and enhanced to support growing demand from our membership’. December (2018) saw Pete Sellars succeed Julian Amey as CEO; Ian Hinitt
Last year’s Healthcare Estates conference and exhibition saw over 130 speakers present, giving delegates a wide range of content to choose from.
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