IHEEM AE CONFERENCE 2019
As with previous IHEEM national AE conferences, this year’s event was well attended, and saw some good debate.
self-sufficiency in their clients. “Don’t make yourself indispensable for the wrong reasons,” Philip Lonsdale cautioned. He concluded by telling those present: “The Authorising Engineer, regardless of discipline, is there to support as a ‘friend’, and for some, to be seen as a ‘foe’, if they don’t like the message.”
A common experience – shared Commenting on Philip Lonsdale’s presentation, IHEEM’s CEO, Pete Sellars, noted that the speaker had ‘very openly’ shared his experiences of being ‘both a friend and a foe’ as an AE to a range of healthcare organisations. He said: “I suspect everyone in this room has been placed in such circumstances at some point in their career, and indeed you might be in that position now. Listening to Philip’s presentation, I think the crux is how you best become that ‘critical friend’, i.e. how you provide that professional advice to look after the interests of the patients of the organisation you are working for. That’s my answer to whether the AE is indeed a friend or a foe – to be truly effective in their role, the Authorising Engineer needs to be that ‘critical friend’. At this point, Pete Sellars opened up the floor to questions/comments. The first
to comment was Eddie McLaughlin, Assistant Director, Engineering, Environment and Decontamination, Health Facilities Scotland, who said he was keen to ‘develop the theme’ that Pete Sellars had touched on around ‘human nature’. He said: “We’ve had a good focus on how the AE and the client should behave, but we are all people, and Authorising Engineers are financially dependent on satisfied clients for their livelihood. How does an AE in that situation behave independently?”
Not an easy question to answer Philip Lonsdale said this was ‘a good question’, that AEs at the Water Hygiene Centre asked themselves quite regularly. He added: “It’s not an easy question to answer, but, for example, the Legionella Control Association has produced guidelines on how to ‘blow the whistle’. Of course every circumstance is different, but as Andrew Poplett, an earlier speaker, made clear (HEJ – April 2019), if we do things the right way, maybe we don’t actually have to make the decision to blow the whistle. Everybody should know of any major issues well before we reach that juncture.”
Pete Sellars responded: “I think the
point Eddie makes is that the relationship between the AE and the client is two-way; it’s as much about understanding the client’s role in terms of the personal, emotional connection, as it is about the professional connection. I think we all have the responsibility to share those messages. The example Philip gave of the Estates director ‘jumping up and down’ after an unfavourable audit was an interesting one. While ‘inside’ he might well feel like doing this, to react thus ‘externally’ is not very professional. The estates professional should be taking a calm and considered approach to addressing any issues, in conjunction with the external AE. He or she needs to take into account and understand the AE’s considered and professional standpoint. After all, the AE is there to help, and maybe that’s a message that we all have a responsibility to communicate. How we do that, of course, is another challenge.”
A discussion on impartiality Pete Sellars added that he thought there was also ‘a really interesting discussion to be had about impartiality’, adding: “I actually think that that is where we at IHEEM, as a professional body, are the neutral players. We are gaining the respect nationally of our colleagues in policy, both here in England, and in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. We represent you through our Technical Platforms, and that is why I think it is really important that as an Institute we actually take that view about holding everybody to account, and working within the constraints of our umbrella organisation, IHEEM. That is where our Technical Platform chairs and Technical Platform Groups come in. We have recently written out to people asking them to start to share their thoughts around what we really need to do to provide the proper governance and assurance around how we operate as an Institute, and how our Technical Platforms operate, so that we can actually provide that kind of governance around impartiality.” With that, a very interesting conference session closed.
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May 2019 Health Estate Journal 37
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